


creatures of circumstance

by attheborder



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Amnesia, Crowley POV mostly, Framing Story, Jewish Character, M/M, One Night Stands, Parallel Universes, Past Lives, Pining, Plot Devices, True Love, Wizard of Oz References, contrived as hell, manic pixie dream aziraphale, sugar daddy crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 07:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19168171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Anthony J. Crowley, Jr. is the prodigal son of CrowleyCorp, the UK’s most powerful, dangerous, and controversial technology company.A one-night stand with a mysterious man who calls himself Aziraphale tips his hopeless life upside-down into a dangerous obsession.And somewhere else entirely, a girl-shaped creature is presiding over the back room of a bookshop in Soho, where an angel and a demon lay unconscious on the floor…





	creatures of circumstance

_“I get the feeling to look up_  
_At something larger than myself_  
_And reach for what is not allowed  
No matter how I love the ground”_

— [“You, Of All People”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHsF4_w7Fkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHsF4_w7Fk) \- Wye Oak

 

_“I was pressed down like coal. I suffered. That’s what an angel is. Dust, pressed into a diamond by the weight of this world.”_

— The OA, 2x08 “Overview”

 

**LONDON, 2019**

The man in black slid into the booth silently and smoothly, with a sinuous grace of movement that was wildly over-the-top in the context of the greasy, decrepit fabric of the seat.

Linda, the woman at the counter, knew this man all too well. He came in nearly every day, swaggering in from his flat down the block, to order exactly the same thing. She could not quite put together how his love of the Number 13 Deluxe lent itself to his sticklike frame. Drugs seemed the most likely culprit, or maybe one of those new-fangled eating disorders that her parenting magazines were always going on about.

The television in the shop was playing the evening news. The man in the booth pointedly refused to look at or towards it, but he was powerless to stop the words from reaching his ears:

_“New quarterly numbers posted show the Crowley Corporation has turned a record profit this year, with its surveillance division benifitting greatly from new government contracts. CEO and founder Anthony Crowley, Sr. spoke to shareholders today to congratulate them on their involvement in what is already one of Britain’s most important companies. However, controversies still threaten the corporation, with activists demanding that—”_

“Can you turn that bloody thing off?” the man yelled. Linda quickly reached for the remote behind the counter and thumbed the mute button, silencing the news anchor. She was well aware what kind of chaos this man could generate inside her shop if not appeased immediately. And though he’d pointedly avoided telling her his name, it was impossible not to know: Anthony Crowley Jr., prodigal son of the Crowley Corporation, scion of one of the wealthiest men in England. He must have been rich as sin, no doubt, making his consistent patronage of her grubby establishment quite bewildering, but she worried if she ever let on that she knew who he was, he’d take his business elsewhere.

Despite her quick action with the remote, it seemed Crowley’s mood had been irreparably spoiled by the broadcast. He finished his chicken and chugged the rest of his diet soda with a speed that made even Linda wince, and then was gone through the door with a jingle of the bell, headed east back towards his flat.

As he approached the building, Crowley let out a desperate groan. There was a man standing outside, a mousy, desperate-looking fellow. His slumped shoulders and twitchy countenance belied his occupation: a _reporter._

“Mr. Crowley! Mr. Crowley, sir! Just a moment of your time!” the reporter yelped, upon catching sight of Crowley coming round the corner.

“Absolutely _not,”_ muttered Crowley to himself, pivoting on his heel to walk quickly in the opposite direction. He heard the reporter’s boots pounding the pavement behind him but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around to acknowledge it; seconds later he felt hot breath in his ear as the reporter half-jogged alongside him, stretching out a pocket recorder in the general direction of his mouth.

“Mr. Crowley, do you have any comment on your father’s commitment to place his systems in all major European cities by 2025?”

Crowley said nothing, very loudly.

“Mr. Crowley, your father is well past retirement age, there are rumors of infirmity, do you have any plans to replace him as leader of the family business?” the reporter gasped, his jogging pace quickening as Crowley determinedly and silently lengthened his strides. They turned the corner onto a busier thoroughfare and Crowley began weaving his way through clumps of pedestrians, in a hopeless effort to lose the dogged reporter in the crowd.

“Mr. Crowley, I’m sorry, but how can you live with yourself knowing your company’s products have been responsible for the jailing and sentencing of _hundreds_ of innocent citizens across the country, and contributing to the increased industrialization of the surveillance state—”

Crowley couldn’t take it any longer. With the practiced agility of someone altogether too used to removing themselves from situations the instant they became even mildly uncomfortable, he darted away from the reporter across the sidewalk and lunged towards the nearest door. He opened it, stepped through, and closed it behind him in one swift movement, trapping the reporter outside.

To his dismay, he found himself inside a high-class restaurant. With romantically dim lighting and prim waiters, it was the kind of place Crowley hated with a passion. He braced himself for the swift descent of a maitre d’, probably about to recognize him off the telly and offer him a table that some poor sod had had reserved for months.

But after a few moments passed and there came no _“Table for one, sir?”_ in a posh voice, Crowley allowed himself a moment to breathe.

Raking his eyes across the interior of the restaurant, he immediately spotted what could only be the reason behind the lack of prompt service. There was a passel of waiters gathered in the back of the room, surrounding a table where a shockingly blonde man in a white, wide-lapeled coat and absurd bow-tie was seated, looking indignant.

Crowley crept towards the commotion as casually as anything, until the words of the conversation became audible.

“I am sure there must be some mistake,” the man in white was saying crisply. “If you’d just try the card again—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fell,” said a tall, older waiter, who sounded very much like he wasn’t sorry at all, “but this card was _declined._ Multiple times. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to provide legitimate payment, or we’ll be forced to call in the authorities.”

“Just try it _one_ more time, if you please,” said Mr. Fell, his tone a buttery sheen of politeness coating something far darker.

“Very well,” said the waiter. He turned away with the card, and at that very moment Mr. Fell rocketed out of his seat and made a break for the door.

“Stop him!” called the waiter in outrage.

Mr. Fell was faster than Crowley would have suspected him to be from a look, but not fast enough; the other waiters were upon him in a moment, restraining him from reaching the door. By this point everyone in the restaurant was staring.

“I just wanted _one_ good thing,” Mr. Fell said, his voice cracking. “Just _one_ nice meal… just a _minute_ of happiness... Don’t call the police, I can’t afford bail, please, take pity…”

“Sir, you know we have no choice—” one of his captors, a redheaded waitress, began to say, but someone’s voice interrupted her. Crowley was only half-surprised to find that it was his own.

“Excuse me,” Crowley said, peeling himself off the wall and moving purposefully towards Mr. Fell. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an absurdly fashionable ultraslim wallet, one that contained only a single black credit card. “Please put all of Mr. Fell’s expenses on this card— and keep a tab open.”

The waitress, blinking in surprise, released her vice grip on Mr. Fell’s arm in order to take Crowley’s card. The other employees obediently melted away into the dimness of the restaurant behind her, and the low chatter of the patrons slowly resumed its mundane buzz around them.

Mr. Fell looked utterly dumbstruck. He blinked a few times, as if trying to clear his vision of the apparition of Crowley before him.

“I— I don’t know what to say,” Mr. Fell said. “I assure you, you most certainly did _not_ have to—”

“Oh, but I did, didn’t I?” Crowley said. “Your lower lip was wibbling away like a pile of jello. I couldn’t just stand there and watch the fuzz storm in here and drag you off, I’m only human.”

“Ah, well, I don’t think it would have gotten quite that far,” said Mr. Fell.

“What, you do this often?” Crowley said, raising an eyebrow.

Mr. Fell’s eyes darted off to the side, pointedly avoiding Crowley’s gaze, and his question. He flattened out the sleeves of his jacket primly, without a word, before nodding his head in the direction of his abandoned table.

“Shall we sit down?” he asked.

Crowley didn’t need to be asked twice.

So they sat, and Crowley watched with growing fascination as the man in white plucked his napkin precisely off from up the floor where it had fallen, and spread it across his lap as though his dramatic near-miss just minutes earlier had been the most mundane of hiccups.

“How impolite of me— I haven’t introduced myself properly,” said Mr. Fell once he’d settled in, reaching his hand across the table to shake Crowley’s. “A. Z. Fell, at your service. You can call me—”

“What do the A and Z stand for?” Crowley interjected, unable to help himself.

Mr. Fell looked put-upon. “I— well, that’s really not something I generally—”

“Tell me,” intoned Crowley, leaning in across the table.

“If you must know,” Mr. Fell said, his voice now falling to a hushed whisper, “my real name is—”

He cleared his throat and looked around nervously, before saying, almost too quiet for Crowley to hear: “Aziraphale Zebulon Higginbottom.”

This revelation was far beyond Crowley’s hard-won capacity to stay cool and collected. He let out what could only be described as a long, harmonic wheeze.

“Don’t _laugh_ ,” the man formerly known as Mr. Fell practically whined. “You see, my parents were—”

“I’m not, I’m not laughing,” Crowley protested, while laughing very hard.

When he’d managed to restore his breathing to something approaching baseline, he said: “That settles it, then. I’ll be calling you Aziraphale. The only thing to do.”

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to change your mind—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, then,” said Aziraphale, and he looked meaningfully across the table at Crowley.

Crowley blinked, and then: “Oh! Oh, you want to know _my_ name now?”

Aziraphale said, “That would be the customary course of action, yes. I think I deserve to know whose good graces I have found myself in.”  

This was it, then. Crowley always felt a little bit like Cinderella on nights like this, nights when he gave his name to some beautiful stranger in a dark room. The clock usually struck a bit later than midnight, of course, given his rather nocturnal proclivities, but there was a countdown on all the same. It would end, and sooner, rather than later.

There were so many ways it had gone, in the past: immediate recognition followed by immediate disgust; thirty minutes in and a furtive Google during a piss resulting in a less-than-polite departure; the morning after at their place and a quick glance at a newly-delivered paper revealing some front-page sordid addition to the CrowleyCorp saga, dots quickly connected followed by reliable abandonment.  

And it wasn’t that he didn’t know _very_ well by now that if he were to hang around the type of person to whom the name “Crowley” was a mark of prestige rather than the mark of the beast (and there were _plenty_ of those people in London), there would be no shortage of fawning devotion, no end to the amount of adulation and simpering sycophancy he’d constantly be on the receiving end of. He remembered his twenties very well, despite all of the drugs. But he couldn’t live like that anymore. He hadn’t been able to in a long time.

Or he could lie. He really, simply could lie, give some false name, hush things up as well as he could, and that could prolong things at the very least until his face appeared on the news in one of those semi-regular reports speculating on his sexual orientation or on the likelihood of him falling in line once more as rightful successor to the reins of his father’s corporation.

But lying, to him, seemed just as bad as voluntarily fraternizing with the type of men who thought Thatcher’s death had been a cause for mourning but had their framed Billy Elliot poster hanging on the wall of their bedroom. (Possibly too specific an example, but Crowley always came back to that one when he needed a good laugh.)

“Anthony Crowley, Jr., at your service,” said Crowley, with confidence. “You can call me Crowley.”

Aziraphale nodded, with a small smile. Crowley held his breath, but there was no immediate recognition, no instant drawing back of the shoulders and averting of the eyes. Of course, Crowley couldn’t fully relax until he knew this wasn’t simply because the other man was a Tory, but that sort of thing is what the wine would be for.

He made a smooth, practiced motion over his shoulder that drew a waiter to their table almost immediately; thankfully not the same man who Aziraphale had run from, nor the woman who’d had him by the arms.

“What’s your most expensive red?” asked Crowley.

“That’d be the Châteauneuf-du-Pape, sir,” said the waiter.

“We’ll take the bottle,” Crowley said, and dismissed the waiter with a wink at Aziraphale, who blushed deeply.

“Mr. Crowley, this really is unnecessary—” Aziraphale began to protest, but Crowley cut him off.

“Uh-uh, _Aziraphale,_ ” said Crowley admonishingly, savoring the taste of the name on his tongue. “Gift horse. Mouth. No looky. And don’t call me _Mr._ Crowley, that’s my father. Whom I hate, with a passion.”

“Alright,” said Aziraphale. He drummed his fingers on the spotless linen of the tablecloth, and for a moment Crowley worried that he’d overdone it. But then he leaned back in his chair, and said with a smile: “I’ve already eaten; would you object to skipping straight to desert? They have an eclair here that I’ve heard is simply _divine.”_

Crowley grinned. “I wouldn’t mind. Not at all.”

**A LITTLE WHILE EARLIER, IN ANOTHER PLACE**

 

The thing looked like a girl, but not quite. It had gotten some of the details wrong.

For example, despite limited experience, Crowley was almost positive that human girls did not have long tails that dragged along the floor, or sharp red claws that curled out from their fingertips, or eyes that glowed with a magenta flame. This thing had all three of those, which contrasted dramatically against her cherubically beautiful face and long golden hair.

Crowley wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. He had been lounging about in the back room of A.Z. Fell & Co, generally being a bother while Aziraphale prepared the materials for Anathema’s afternoon lesson. The angel had retrieved a book from his shelf, flipped through its pages while saying something utterly inconsequential to Crowley, and the next thing they both knew the book had flung itself across the room and belched a puff of red smoke. A few seconds later the smoke had formed itself dizzily into the thing-that-wasn’t-quite-a-girl, who was now pacing back and forth across the room, looking rather hungrily about her.

“It’s all very simple,” the girl-thing was saying, in response to Aziraphale’s stammered inquiries. She stopped her pacing and stood across the room from the angel and the demon, facing them. Her tail swished against the rare Turkish rug.

“Heaven and Hell are like _this._ All up-and-down-like. _”_ She laid one hand flat on top of the other, then brought them apart vertically, like two elevators. “But they’re taking a little break right now—”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, and then back at the girl-thing, with a slight guilty expression. “Ah yes,” he said. “That’d be our fault.”

The girl-thing looked like she wanted to strangle Aziraphale for interrupting her, which Crowley found himself relating to.

“Anyway,” she said, “Demons and angels forget this, to their detriment: up-and-down isn’t the only way to go. When those vertical bonds between the above and the below weaken due to absence…” She brought her hands together again, in a prayer-hands shape, and then drew them apart horizontally, wiggling her fingers for added effect.

“Then everything _else_ is let in, from the sides,” she finished. “Like me.”

“Horizontal magic,” breathed Aziraphale.

“Oh, there’s got to be a better name for that,” said Crowley, rolling his eyes.

“I’d like to hear you come up with one!” Aziraphale snapped.

Before Crowley could retort, the girl-thing let out a chilling, inhuman laugh. “Oh, look at you two!” she shrieked. “You’re _perfect!”_

Aziraphale preened, “Well, it is said that all of Heaven’s creatures are—”

“I don’t think that’s what she means, angel,” Crowley said. Aziraphale gulped.

To the girl-thing, Crowley said: “What do you want?”

She caught his eye and grinned, revealing perfectly curved and pointed fangs. With another cackle of glee, she twirled herself across the room, landing in front of Aziraphale’s work desk, which he had decorated sentimentally with a few photographs. She reached out and grabbed a vertical strip of paper that Crowley instantly recognized, even from a distance: Blackpool, 1969. A photobooth in a dark bar off the beach. Terrible beer had flown freely; once inebriation had reached a certain point, Crowley had been able to coerce Aziraphale into the booth. He’d waved a hand at the coin slot and laughed as Aziraphale went googly-eyed at the camera flash.

The girl-thing gazed at the photo strip and then pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply as if she were trying to summon the seashore-salt scent of that sunny Blackpool day into the room around them. A black tongue flickered in and out of her mouth, coating the tiny images with a film of slime that.... Sparkled? Yes, it glittered slightly in the dim light of the shop.

She whirled around to face Crowley and Aziraphale, holding the photo strip up in the air victoriously like an important award. “You both,” she said, “are simply _delicious._ Oh, six thousand years….”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley worriedly. “What does she—”

He shushed the angel with a wave. “You won’t be able to destroy us, if that’s what you’re after,” Crowley said threateningly to the girl-thing. “You just said it yourself, you know how long we’ve been around. You can tell how powerful we are—”

“ _Destroy_ you?” the girl-thing laughed, as though that was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “Why, that would defeat the purpose of it all!”

Aziraphale craned his neck to try and see the page of the bestiary the creature had emerged from, for if he could just find out what exactly she _was_ then it was very possible he could banish her with a simple word of power or a sigil. But she spotted him quickly and, with a flick of her tail, swept the book closed.

“Oh _no_ you don’t,” the girl-thing crowed. “You’re not getting out of this easily. Unless…”

“Unless _what?”_ Crowley said. He was always down to take the easy route out of a sticky situation, but somehow he didn’t think she was the kind of lady who’d take willingly to monetary bribery.

The girl-thing let the photo strip flutter to the floor as she slowly stepped close to him and Aziraphale. She extended her hands, letting one rest on the back of each of their heads, and gently turned them to face each other. A shiver ran down Crowley’s spine as the tips of her claws met the skin of his scalp.

Aziraphale’s eyes were on the creature. His face was quite still, but Crowley could see the fear swimming just below the surface. He suspected that, like himself, the angel could sense the power emanating from the creature; neither heaven nor hell, but something far stranger, far _wilder._ Horizontal, indeed.

The girl-thing leaned in, bringing her face in between theirs. To Aziraphale, her long silken hair had a scent that was curiously quite reminiscent of the inside of Crowley’s Bentley. Crowley couldn’t smell her hair at all, but that was because, to him, it smelled identical to the interior of the bookshop they were standing inside of.

“ _Unless,_ ” the girl-thing said sweetly, “you’ve got something you want to say to each other.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aziraphale said politely. “If you could perhaps, ah, let go of us for a moment, we could all sit down together and have a civilized conversation, I could prepare us all cups of tea—”

“And you, demon?” said the girl-thing, ignoring the angel’s pleas.

Crowley looked at Aziraphale, whose eyes finally slid from the creature’s to his. Blue-green met gold; Crowley stared into the most familiar face he’d ever known, the one constant through millennia of change, the face he’d betrayed Hell for and would again, over and over— and there were so _many_ things he could say, so _many_ things he’d wanted to, but with a strange and fierce creature’s claws wrapped threateningly in his hair this hardly seemed to Crowley like the appropriate time for certain emotional revelations.

“No?” the girl-thing prompted. “Nothing at all to say?” She licked her lips with that black tongue, hungrily, full of desire. “It’s all the same to me, if we end up doing it the hard way. I just thought I’d give you the chance...”

“I swear, I don’t know what you want us to—” Crowley began to protest through gritted teeth, but the girl-thing yelped with sadistic glee, cutting him off.

“You _do,_ you do, you stupid, stupid man,” she said. “You lovely, wonderful, stupid things, both of you, OH! Oh, this is going to be _brilliant.”_

And she took her hands and pressed _hard_ and slammed Crowley and Aziraphale’s heads together and there was a jolt of pain as their foreheads met and _then—_

**LATER**

The waiters had begun hovering insistently around midnight, long after all the other diners had gone, looking very much like they wished this was the type of restaurant where grown men could be dramatically ejected by use of physical force.

“Come on,” said Crowley finally, easing himself up from his chair, and motioning Aziraphale to do the same. Aziraphale stared up at him from his seat, a puzzled expression growing on his face.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Crowley said, smirking. “Do you have somewhere else to be? No, didn’t think so. Get up, I’m taking you out. The night is young, and I have a credit card.”

Crowley offered out a hand, and Aziraphale took it as he rose to his feet. Crowley felt the other man’s skin under his fingertips, softer than any hand had a right to be, and for a moment Crowley let himself hope with a deep fervency that this Aziraphale Z. Higginbottom, this most strange of strangers, would keep holding on, would keep his fingers curled so gentle under Crowley’s palm. Crowley wanted the night to happen faster, to go by quicker; Crowley wanted to skip all the bullshit steps, to fast forward to the good stuff, before the hammer fell and Aziraphale lost any and all respect for him that he’d had the chance to build up.

But the moment passed, and Crowley shook his hand away from Aziraphale’s to place it in his pocket, and Aziraphale brushed his quickly upwards to straighten his bow-tie.

They wandered out onto the street, and Crowley led his new friend down the block towards a squalid spot called Hellfire. They were halfway there before Crowley managed to recognize, through the haze of the wine, that the choice to take a man wearing linen pants into a leather bar was very possibly a wild misjudgement on his part.

“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale, as soon as they walked through the door and were enveloped by the pulsating beat of house music, and the deep red glow of the club lights.

“I’m sorry,” said Crowley, turning to him, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have— We can leave, I know another—”

“No,” said Aziraphale quickly, an impish grin spreading across his face. “No, this place seems... _lovely._ ”

They situated themselves at the bar overlooking the dancefloor, and Crowley once more handed over his black card in order to summon the row of shots that soon appeared before them.

“Why’ve you got sunglasses on?” Aziraphale asked, after downing a shot. He’d clearly been working up to the question all night long. “We’re inside. We’ve _been..._ inside. And it’s nighttime.”

“Why are _you_ dressed like a 19th-century reenactor at a manor house in Hertfordshire?” Crowley retorted with a smirk.

Aziraphale valiantly attempted to bristle, but his level of intoxication caused it to come off as more of a sassy shoulder-shake. “Because I _like_ to,” he said.

“There you go, then,” said Crowley. “Same for me. Best reason you could have.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Three shots in and Aziraphale was leaning with his head on the bar, smiling stupidly and drunkly up at Crowley. This made Crowley feel just a little bit uncomfortable, knowing what was to come. He needed to be drunker.  

And there was something else, too… something about the way the corners of Aziraphale’s mouth had drifted upwards into blissful little points reminded Crowley of… of _something_ , of someone, perhaps, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I feel like we’ve met before,” Crowley yelled hoarsely over the thumping bass. “Did we ever meet before?”

“Wha’d’you say?” slurred Aziraphale.

“Never mind,” Crowley said. “Shall we dance?” He nodded off to his left, towards the crowded dancefloor, where the lights were reflecting off of slicked muscles and metal rivets.

This Aziraphale seemed to hear quite clearly, as evidenced by him shaking his head quite rapidly and holding up a finger, as if to tell Crowley off like a schoolteacher for even daring to suggest such a course of action.

“I.. do _not…_ dance,” said Aziraphale, over-enunciating precisely. “Ever. _Especially_ not whilst drunk.”

He seemed quite insistent on this topic, even after another shot. This frustrated Crowley to no end, because he certainly wasn’t going to choose tonight to become part of one of _those_ couples who start throwing themselves all over each other right at the bar. That’s what the _dancing_ was for. And the later it got, and the louder it got, and the drunker he got, the more he wanted to shake Aziraphale out of that stupid jacket, undo that _stupid_ bow-tie, lift off that _incredibly stupid_ waistcoat and tear away at his shirt until he had nothing but pale skin under his fingertips and sweet breath on his face.

The club was growling all about them; normally Crowley would be helpless against the magnetic pull of the bodies around him, and he’d find himself swallowed up without even trying inside the swirl of sweat and heat. Tonight, though, the man before him was some kind of strange antidote, his mere presence actively changing the chemistry of Crowley’s carefully ritualized insouciance. If there was to be no dancing, he found himself perfectly able to reason, then there was no cause to stick around. They could get on with it, so to speak.

“Alright, you win, stranger,” Crowley said. “No dancing.”

A few minutes later and the pair of them were back out on the street, staggering through the April night. As they took the turn past the restaurant from earlier Aziraphale let out a triumphant yell, shaking his fist in the direction of the now-closed shutter.

“You can’t be rid of me so easily!” he yowled gleefully. “Not when I’ve got my guardian angel—”

In an instant, Crowley had Aziraphale up against the shutter, his arm across the other man’s neck.

“ _Don’t_ call me that. Don’t _ever_ call me an—”

“What— what, I didn’t—” There was genuine fear in Aziraphale’s drunken stammer; Crowley relaxed his hold just enough to ease Aziraphale’s breathing, but kept him pinned, leaning into him until their faces were bare inches apart.

“I’m _not_ your _angel,_ ” Crowley hissed. “I’m _not_ a good person.”

Aziraphale looked up at him. His eyes were a brilliant sea-color; even in the dimness of Crowley’s shadow falling across his face, even in the darkness of the night, they shone.

“I don’t believe you,” Aziraphale said simply.

Crowley sighed. “Oh, I can’t stand an optimist,” he said, the fire fled from his words. He moved his hand to the side of Aziraphale’s face, and let it linger there for just a moment before kissing him, deeply and slowly.

Crowley couldn’t remember the path they took to get back to his flat from the shuttered restaurant; he could barely recall his key entering the front lock, but they must have climbed the stairs at some point because there they were, barely inside the door and Aziraphale had his hands on Crowley’s jacket collar, pulling it off with a swiftness and tossing it to the floor.

Crowley’s hands made quick work of Aziraphale’s numerous outer layers, for what it was worth, and at last got his fingers around the knot of the bowtie and undid it. Beneath his collar Aziraphale’s neck was smooth and unblemished, rather moreso than Crowley would have expected for a man of Aziraphale’s age. He inhaled deeply, conjuring up the ghost of moisturizers past.

“You’re so… _clean,”_ breathed Crowley, quite unable to think of anything sexier to say.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever told me,” Aziraphale said, sounding wholly serious. “Now, let me see those eyes…” With a gentle tug he lifted Crowley’s head up to pull off his shades.

“Nothing to see here,” demurred Crowley, holding steady eye contact with Aziraphale as he unbuttoned, as quickly as he could manage without looking down in his inebriated state, the other man’s shirt. “Just regular, boring brown.”

“Not boring at all,” Aziraphale said firmly. “They’re _nice.”_

They were kissing again after that and so there was no more time for compliments. With a firm guiding hand on the other man’s bottom, Crowley led Aziraphale across the studio flat to his bed in the corner.

Crowley hoped fervently that Aziraphale was altogether too distracted by things like belt buckles, socks, and the ongoing removals thereof to pay any attention to his environs. Crowley wasn’t exactly _proud_ of the flat’s peeling, unadorned walls, the unpolished, dusty wood floor, or the utter absence of any furniture, decoration, or ornamentation besides the bed, a ratty old sofa, and a rickety card table with a single folding chair to match. But it was all part and parcel of a chronic-crisis-as-lifestyle that he couldn’t possibly explain to Aziraphale while still keeping his cards close to his chest.

In any case, Aziraphale didn’t seem to notice or care that Crowley’s bed consisted only of a mattress and box-spring, no frame; it was all the same as far as pushing Crowley back onto it and straddling him with a fearsome hunger.

Crowley raked his hands down the sides of Aziraphale’s bare chest, which resulted a delightful shiver and a soft groan that nearly split Crowley’s world wide open then and there.

“What do you want?” Crowley whispered up to Aziraphale. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

Aziraphale smiled. “You are too much,” he said. “You know what I want.” And he leaned back in, pressing himself to Crowley and running a tongue down the bridge of his nose before once more bringing their mouths together.

A few minutes later, Crowley’s hand flew out to the side of the bed blindly, groping around for the appropriate supplies that he had stowed in a cardboard box, the same one that held his never-used reading glasses. When he had them in hand he used his other hand to push Aziraphale up and off of him, flipping him over onto his back, where he lay so perfectly that Crowley wished he could pause time, wished he could stare for hours at this view before moving on to what was coming next. But he couldn’t, so instead he just lingered there, letting the moment unwind lazily, letting Aziraphale’s bare chest rise and fall in the gentle light of the flat’s single dim bulb.

At first Aziraphale made no move to get Crowley going again, seemingly perfectly content to stare up at Crowley. Then, he reached down to himself, touching, teasing Crowley with the movement of his own hands, breathing, fluttering his eyes closed, until Crowley got the message.

Crowley wrapped his hand around Aziraphale’s wrist and pinned it down to the bed as he moved above him, preparing himself with his other hand. He was seized with the urge to tell Aziraphale that he’d gotten it wrong, back there at the shuttered restaurant— if one of them was the angel, it was the man below Crowley now, but that seemed a bit much, somehow. Instead he satisfied himself with saying, “You’re something _else,”_ as he finished with the supplies, tossed them to the side, and dove back down to the bed.

And then, oh, Aziraphale felt so _good_ around Crowley, so right, and he eased himself into a movement that rolled through them both, effortlessly, bringing Aziraphale to the brink over luxurious minutes that stretched out, infinite. Aziraphale’s breaths were near-silent, at first; Crowley leaned over his ear and hissed, “I want to _hear_ you,” and Aziraphale obeyed, moaning louder, louder, so that every move Crowley made echoed in the shape of the other man’s voice.

Crowley expected the two of them to slow down as they sobered up, perhaps even for Aziraphale to finally take stock of where he was and excuse himself for the night, but precisely the opposite occurred. It was like a jug of water, pouring itself out but somehow staying full at the same time, able to wash over the same stretch of sand again and again, creating new patterns, each more resplendent than the last.

Aziraphale tasted like the night, he felt like gold under Crowley’s mouth, and when Aziraphale brought his own tongue down between Crowley’s thighs and Crowley had his hands buried in that white hair, Crowley couldn’t stop his voice from spilling out of him, saying what must have been words but felt more like incantations, blessings.

And later, when they finally collapsed back onto the bed, utterly spent, Aziraphale wrapped himself around Crowley, his body steady and firm and wonderful, and Crowley slept— the quiet, dreamless sleep of a child, the peaceful rest of a man who was quite unaware of how his life was about to change.

***

Crowley woke the next morning with a regulation-issue hangover and a special-edition hard-on.

He rolled over and blinked, half-expecting for no reason other than experience, to see Aziraphale’s clothes picked up off the floor and the man himself gone without a trace. But there he was, seated on the edge of the bed. The white sheet fallen around his waist and the sunlight illuminating the curve of his back and the shock of his hair made him look, to Crowley, like a Roman statue upon a plinth in a temple, the kind all the pretty virgins masturbated furiously to in their tents at night.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Crowley said.  

Aziraphale looked over his shoulder at Crowley, who stretched and yawned performatively.

“I think a large Magritte reproduction would suit that north wall well, don’t you?” Aziraphale mused, looking back out at the bare room around them, not with judgement but with a kind eye for improvement.

Crowley grinned. “A reproduction?” he said. “You offend me. Let’s go to Christie’s, you can help me pick out a real one.”

“Surely you’re joking.”

“I am not,” said Crowley, resting his hands behind his head.  “We’ll eat first, of course. Anywhere you like.”

Aziraphale looked as if he wanted to kiss Crowley for saying that, and do other things besides.

Crowley didn’t stop him.

***

They barely knew anything about each other, intimate physical details aside, and it wasn’t looking like that would change anytime soon. For someone totally willing to reveal his wildly embarrassing full name to a complete stranger just the previous night, Aziraphale was now oddly uninterested in recounting any kind of further details regarding his background, his youth, or even his day-to-day occupation.

And for his part, Crowley was more than happy to keep the morning’s conversation steered far, _far_ away from personal matters. The aforementioned proverbial clock was ticking quieter now that they had made it successfully through the night, but Crowley knew with practiced certainty that it was ticking nonetheless.

They got dressed and exited the flat. Around this time on a regular day, Crowley might head to the cinema to see some idiotic movie by himself, breakfasting on cheap popcorn and letting the sugary voices of cartoon characters designed for and by grade-schoolers ease his mind into a low-grade stupor before he had to engineer the afternoon and evening’s medium- and high-grade stupors, respectively.

But he was with Aziraphale, and Aziraphale had expensive tastes. He’d selected a restaurant known for its exuberant floral centerpieces and expansive selection of jams and jellies. They wandered there from Crowley’s flat, taking their time, speaking of frivolities such as the weather (quite nice for this time of year), tap water (Aziraphale highly recommended Edinburgh’s), and Crystal Palace’s odds for the Premier League (not looking good).   

There was something _tied up_ about Aziraphale, Crowley thought as they walked, something still buried deep despite the previous night’s breathless undoing. He tried to put together all the things he knew about the other man, form some coherent picture of who he _was,_ but kept coming up blank.

Really, the only thing he knew with any confidence was that now was the time when he usually began to get bored with someone he’d brought home— but his interest in Aziraphale, his desire to simply exist around him, had in fact been growing stronger by the minute.

Once settled into their table on the restaurant patio, Aziraphale ordered Belgian waffles, with extra whipped cream, and Crowley had the sweet potato quiche. Aperol spritzes were poured and drunk and refilled and drunk again, and soon Aziraphale was volubly explaining his position on current events.

“If something is _important_ enough, surely they’ll be crowing it from street corners,” he was saying. “Or if it concerns me directly, somehow, I’ll hear about it directly from a more well-informed friend. I just don’t see the _need_ to keep up with things _as_ they happen, before they’ve had time to properly digest.”

“So you’re saying you like your news a little... _fermented_ ,” Crowley said.

“Well, when you put it that way,” Aziraphale said brightly, “yes, I suppose I do.”

“No mobile, then?” Crowley asked, hardly daring to believe it could be true. A mature, intelligent, kind man with no knowledge of or interest in in the kind of wretched contemporary drama that Crowley tended to feature so prominently in? An impossibility, he’d thought, for so long.

Aziraphale shook his head, daintily dabbing at his lips with his napkin. “No, no phone,” he said. “No television. No anything, really. I don’t even get the paper anymore, can’t afford it...”

“So what do you _do_ all day?” Crowley couldn’t help asking at this point.

“Oh, this and that,” said Aziraphale carefully.  “Just… getting by.”

“Right,” Crowley said. “This and that.” He sipped his drink. “And what _would_ you do, Aziraphale, if you… didn’t _have_ to just get by?”

“Well… I’ve always wanted to open a shop,” said Aziraphale wistfully.

“What would you sell, in your shop?” Crowley asked, popping the “p” at the end of _shop_ in a resolutely annoying manner.

A smile broke across Aziraphale’s face like sun through the clouds. “Books,” he said. “All kinds of wonderful books. Old ones, rare ones… Big beautiful books, and small, ugly ones that are much more fun… Books nobody will ever read, except for me, of course, I’d read them all…”

“And where would it be? Do you have a neighborhood in mind?”

Aziraphale looked around him, eyes sweeping over the patio of the restaurant onto the Soho street beyond.

“Somewhere around here,” he said, his eyes wide with imagination. “Yes, Soho would be _perfect…_ but, ah,” and now his expression fell. “I’m afraid real estate here, or anywhere else in the country, for that matter, is quite out of the question, given my current… financial situation.”

“Mm,” said Crowley. Perhaps it was the Aperol— he could feel himself getting a bit Aladdin, you know, _I can show you the world_ and all that— but all he really wanted to do right then was sweep Aziraphale out of the restaurant, off his feet, and into a new life where he never had to reference his “financial situation” in such an utterly heartbreaking tone again.

A little while later Crowley was picking up the check (of course) and then they were walking out onto the street. Ostensibly they were headed towards Christie’s, where Crowley was looking forward to purchasing for Aziraphale if not a Magritte original then perhaps a Dickens first edition or something of the sort.  

But in that moment Crowley didn’t care where they were going, or how long it was going to take them to get there. He could’ve wandered all day with Aziraphale, going precisely nowhere and ending up exactly where they’d come from, which is to say, his bed. He knew he was getting ahead of himself, but Crowley already found himself imagining the things he’d do to Aziraphale tonight, once the other man had been suitably pampered with a prix-fixe meal and another expensive bottle, of course.

Crowley guided Aziraphale down side streets and pointed out every “For Sale” and “To Let” sign, every empty storefront that could conceivably hold a friendly little bookshop. He knew he was going too far when he began snapping photos of the agents’ numbers on the signs, promising Aziraphale he’d could find the best spot for the best price, talking about how to properly negotiate a real estate deal, things he hadn’t thought of or spoken about in years— but he couldn’t help himself.

They rounded a corner, headed south, and then down the block Crowley immediately spotted something that sent his heart plummeting through the bottom of his gut, and the gears of his daydreams grinding to a permanent halt.

It wasn’t that he had forgotten completely about the CrowleyCorp satellite office in Soho— it would be impossible to forget, even for a man as ashamed of his past as Crowley, the place where one had spent eleven years simultaneously heading up the nation’s most prestigious Research & Development division, carrying on multiple sordid affairs with various employees, and maintaining a steady dependence on cocaine.

No, he’d not forgotten. In fact, he’d done precisely the opposite. Crowley had simply been so ensorcelled by the atmosphere of beatific peace that seemed to follow Aziraphale around like a particulate cloud made up of molecule-sized puppies that he hadn’t noticed at all when his feet had locked back onto the autopilot path that he’d taken every morning for thousands of days.

It made a sick kind of sense that the circuitous route he’d been leading Aziraphale on through the neighborhood had not been the random wanderings of a man enamored but something more subconsciously sinister altogether. As if something deep inside of him had forced a course-correction, selecting the events of the day in a manner engineered precisely to bring his precarious hours of happiness crashing to the ground in a grand finale of melodrama.

For before them, just a few dozen yards away on the sidewalk in front of the CrowleyCorp office, was a large group of young student protestors, waving large signs and shouting fiercely up at the spotless, closed windows of the building.

“C’mon, let’s go the other way, they’re up to no good…” Crowley muttered, trying not to let an edge of desperation color his tone.

To his utter dismay, Aziraphale responded: “No, it looks exciting!” and quickened his pace towards the group. “Young people exercising their right to protest! How invigorating. Certainly, it gives me hope— perhaps we could join in! Tell off the Man, and all! I wonder, what do you think they’re taking a stand against? If I could just see the signs they’re holding…”

Crowley’s heart was beating fast now. “Maybe let’s cross the street, then, we can watch from the other side–”

But their feet had brought them too close now to turn away, close enough to read the protest signs, which said things like _DIE CROWLEY DIE_ and _PRE-CRIME SENTENCING IS A CRIME._

There was a commotion in the crowd as the first few protestors to spot Crowley and his companion shouted warnings. Within a single terrible instant they’d all turned to face the two of them.

Crowley put out a hand to stop Aziraphale from going any further down the sidewalk. He really had to wonder what all of this looked like to the other man.

“ _You!_ ” growled the leader of the pack, a smartly-attired student activist with cropped hair and a picket sign that read _CROWLEYCORP = UK’S CANCER._ She handed the sign off to another student before reaching into a canvas bag and pulling out two round, red objects, which she then hurled with terrifying accuracy towards the two men.

Crowley had just a second to meet Aziraphale’s eyes before the balloons landed squarely on their chests, exploding in bursts of red paint that left the front of their clothing soaking and shiny-wet.

Aziraphale stammered indignantly, touching a finger to the stain on the front of his previously pristine shirt and pulling it away, coated scarlet.

“Aziraphale, come on, let’s go—” Crowley began to beg, but Aziraphale pushed Crowley’s still-extended arm out of the way and stepped towards the activist.

“Please, ma’am, there was absolutely no need for such violence,” Aziraphale said, but even as he spoke, Crowley helplessly saw his gaze jump from slogan to slogan across the picket signs, as of yet uncomprehendingly. “We are just innocent passersby, seeking free passage through your little, ah, shindig…”

Something deep inside Crowley’s stomach wrenched at the horrible inevitability of it all. He felt like he was watching a Jenga tower fall in slow motion; like he was trapped behind glass at a football match, watching his team lose; like the world was ending and he could do absolutely nothing, nothing at all, to stop it.

“I’m sorry, _sir,_ ” said the activist in a mockery of Aziraphale’s politeness that made something inside of Crowley break ever so quietly, “but do you _know_ who this man is? Do you know who his _father_ is?”

Aziraphale, clearly startled by this line of inquiry, said, “Well, we haven’t quite gotten to the familial introductions stage yet, but I assure you I—”

“Don’t believe anything he’s told you,” said the activist savagely. “He is a _criminal_ and the son of a _criminal,_ he and his father should both be rotting in the very same prisons they’ve sent dozens of innocent citizens to!”

She rounded on Crowley now. “You may have left your position at CrowleyCorp a decade ago, but it’s _your_ fingerprints all _over_ the Pre-Crime systems, it’s _your_ predatory media algorithms that have radicalized _hundreds_ of British teenagers, and we know for a _fact_ that it’s the guidance systems _you personally_ developed during your time here that are sending autonomous drones into Yemen and Syria to target _schools_ and _hospitals!”_ The activist’s eyes blazed with righteous fury as she jabbed a purple-lacquered fingernail in Crowley’s direction.   

“Crowley… what does she…?” began Aziraphale. Crowley couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Go on, ask him. Ask him if I’m right.” The activist sneered derisively at the pair of them, her hand already preemptively wriggling back inside her bag to retrieve another paint balloon, surely destined for Crowley’s head if she had anything to say about it.

Aziraphale opened and closed his mouth a few times before finding purchase on the proper question.

“Crowley. Tell me it isn’t true,” he said, quite uselessly.

Crowley knew he could do nothing of the sort. “It’s all true,” he said. “It is.”

Aziraphale said nothing, then, just simply turned and began to walk with precise determination, red-stained hands behind his back, back down the street the way they’d come, away from the protestors and away from Crowley.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–” Crowley began, walking to catch up with Aziraphale. He was uncomfortably put in mind of the scene yesterday with the reporter, except now _he_ was the one chasing someone who very obviously did not want to be chased.

Crowley put a hand out and grabbed Aziraphale by the paint-splashed shoulder, stopping him in his tracks, and came around to face him on the sidewalk. Crowley _knew_ how this went, he had _known_ this was coming, he really had, but for some godforsaken reason he found himself telling himself that this was _different,_ that Aziraphale was different, that when he made his case it would all fall into place this time, and they’d resume their day like nothing had happened...

“I never lied. Did I _ever_ lie?” pleaded Crowley.

Now it was Aziraphale who refused to meet Crowley’s gaze. “I wish you had.”

“Christ, Aziraphale, I—”

“Crowley!” snapped Aziraphale, in a harsh tone Crowley could scarcely believe belonged to him. “Crowley, I can’t— you were going to _purchase_ a _building_ for _me_ with that money? You paid for my _dinner_ last night with that money— and _breakfast—_ and all the while you’re living like a sewer rat, no _furniture,_ no _books_ at all _,_ I thought I could forgive it as the eccentricities of another spoilt, overgrown man-child ashamed of vaguely noble parentage or some-such 21st-century nonsense…”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, pressed his fingertips to the bridge of his nose before continuing.

“You must have thought that because I didn’t recognize your _name_ that I— that I didn’t _know,_ or didn’t _care,_ well, Crowley, I may be a step removed from all— all _this,_ but I’m no idiot, and I have no tolerance _whatsoever_ for injustice, or oppression, or using the pain of others to benefit oneself, in _any_ way!”

“I can explain, it’s not what it seems—”

Aziraphale screwed up his face in pain, letting out a whimper of a sigh. “I was having _such_ a good time with you. And now my _jacket_ is _ruined!_ ”

“I’ll buy you another one, a better one—” Crowley began automatically; the second the words left his mouth he came to the unfortunate realization that he’d said absolutely the worst possible thing he could say.

“You’re pathetic,” said Aziraphale. And he wasn’t really _angry_ anymore _,_ that was the worst thing— the expression on his face was one of utter _pity_ , sheer contempt for what he saw before him, the man so apparently long-drowned in his own guilt that he refused to spend money earned off the pain of countless innocents on _himself_ , but had no problem laundering it through exorbitant lavishment upon certain chosen others. There was wounded pride in Aziraphale’s face as well, a deep offense taken to the very idea of having been the unknowing middleman in this scheme.

“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” Crowley said, knowing full well how wretched he sounded. “I was going to tell you—”

“Oh, you’ll lie _now_ , to save yourself, I see,” said Aziraphale haughtily. “You were _never_ going to tell me. You were going to let this drag on for as long as you possibly could, just— just _buying_ me things, until it all came crashing down. Well, I regret to inform you that I’ll no longer be playing a role in your bizarre morality theatre, thank you very much.”

“I told you,” said Crowley desperately. “Last night. I _told_ you I wasn’t a good person. And you said— you _said—_ ”

Crowley couldn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t make the words come out. He could only watch, powerless, as Aziraphale stepped down off the sidewalk, crossed the street, and disappeared into the city crowd, without looking back.

 

**ELSEWHERE**

 

“Aziraphale? Hello?”

Anathema was used to the angel greeting her promptly at the entrance of the bookshop when she arrived for her Thursday afternoon lessons, but today she pushed open the door to find the shop silent and empty, no Aziraphale in sight.

“Crowley? Hi, anyone there?” No response again. Anathema began to make her way into the shop, towards the back room where Aziraphale usually held her lessons.

There was a strange scent in the air— it took her a second to recognize it, as it felt so misplaced, but it couldn’t be anything else: that was most certainly Newt’s aftershave, wafting through the bookshop.

But Newt couldn’t be here, could he? She’d just left him sitting at the kitchen table in Jasmine Cottage a bit over an hour ago, and there was no way he could have beat her here in _his_ car.

Something strange was going on. Anathema crept slowly towards the door leading to the back room. She couldn’t hear anything, but as she approached, her finely-tuned internal occult sensory apparatus began to tingle. But not in the any of the usual ways; not in the gentle, fine-grained way it did when she was around the angel, or the pleasantly prickly way it did when the demon was near— an altogether new and different sensation. The only thing she could think to compare it to was the massage chairs that the mall in Malibu used to have when she was younger, the leathery kind that attacked your back with deep, pulsating throbs after the sacrifice of a few quarters. Yes, it was a _pressure_ she could feel, a low beating like a very, _very_ large heart…

She pushed open the back room door and gasped, her hand flying to her face.

Sprawled out on the floor were Aziraphale and Crowley, both unconscious. And perched on a table above them, like some kind of bird of prey, was a girl-shaped creature with a long black tail and sharp red claws. Her eyes were closed as well but she was awake and smiling; her hands twitched up and down and to the side as if she were conducting an invisible symphony.

As Anathema stepped inside the creature’s eyes flew open, and locked her in an otherworldly pink gaze. Anathema was paralyzed with fear, certainly not for herself but for the two friends lying helplessly on the floor, trapped in the thrall of a girl-thing with a deep red aura like blood spilled in the very air itself.

“Welcome to the party,” the creature said. Her voice was bubbly and effervescent; it sounded like it belonged on a rooftop deck somewhere, not emerging from a black-tongued mouth inside a dusty, dark room.

“Who are you? _What_ are you? What have you done with Aziraphale and Crowley?” Anathema said, horrorstruck. “And why… why do you smell like my boyfriend?”

“It’s for their own good, I promise.” said the creature. “But I can’t have interruptions, I hope you understand. Art in progress, you know.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not going to _leave_ you here with them—”

“Is that so? Such a devoted friend… I could put you to use…. In that case, why don’t you _join_ them?” The girl-thing’s smile cracked her face wide open, and Anathema’s heart began to pound against her better judgement at the sight of those sharp teeth.

Anathema was intent on asking the creature what exactly she meant by that, but she never got the chance: as the girl-thing spoke, she reached out a clawed hand towards Anathema and tugged on the air between them, and Anathema dropped to the floor like a stone.

 

**LATER**

 

Crowley had gotten into his car and turned it on, but the thought of actually going anywhere or doing anything had about as much appeal as dining on roadkill straight off the pavement. He hadn't bothered to change out of his paint-stained shirt, besides. He couldn't bring himself to go back up to his flat.

It was truly horrible, Crowley thought, that the only reason he’d gotten as far as he did with Aziraphale— that man’s beautifully admirable disconnection from the horrors of the modern world— was the very same reason that it would be so impossible to find him again. The man had no mobile phone, no social media. He was a veritable ghost. Neither of the names Crowley knew him to use (A.Z. Fell or, well, the other one) turned up any results online, no home address nor employment records. No evidence that he’d ever existed at all.

It was all going to drive Crowley insane, he knew it. In order to demonstrate his realization of this point, he let out a wounded howl that was muffled by the interior of his car so effectively as to neuter it into a pathetic yelp.

“ _Fuck!_ Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Crowley slammed his hand against the central console of the car with each expletive. His palm inadvertently brushed the radio dial, switching on the radio, and immediately the dramatic swells of the mid-section of “Bohemian Rhapsody” filled the vehicle.

_“He’s just a poor boy, from a poor family, spare him his life from this monstrosity—”_

“Ah, HELL!” Crowley yelped, batting at the console as though electrocuted in order to switch it back off, but it was too late— the Universe had most certainly made its point.

“I’m a monstrosity,” Crowley echoed to himself dejectedly, and in that moment he wished he could sink through the driver’s seat, all the way to the pavement and then through the ground itself. He wanted to cover himself with dark earth; he never wanted to see the sun again, he didn’t deserve to.

He was a coward, he knew that much. And his usual method of telling himself, _well, at least I’m not a liar, at least I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not_ was as helpful as it ever was, which is to say, not at all.

It was just sex, wasn’t it? Just sex, food, and money? No different than any of the other times in the recent past that Crowley had been driven to vice by the exigencies of body and blood and boredom. It was just a one-night stand. Fleeting by design, like one of those moths born with no mouths at all, birthed in the morning just to die of starvation by evening, after having fucked its way to evolutionary fulfillment.

But— it _was_ different. Somehow.

The current plan of action Crowley was considering was to leave the car, go back up to his flat, order terrible food and alcohol through one of the many purpose-built delivery apps on his phone, and get so absolutely shitfaced that the sight of the very same peeling walls that so painfully recently had been silent witnesses to the best sex he’d had in years wouldn’t bring him to the brink of self-harm.

Maybe later he would drag his sorry ass back to the scene of the crime; stand outside that damned restaurant for an hour or two or five, waiting for Aziraphale to walk by. Or maybe if he just went about his usual routine, they’d cross paths by sheer coincidence, and Crowley would be able to take Aziraphale by the collar without a word and pull him in for a kiss that would somehow change everything.

God, who was he kidding? This wasn’t a fucking rom-com. And what _was_ it that he _really_ wanted, anyway? Did he just want to fuck him again? Did he want to buy that man his stupid bookshop, fill it with dusty old volumes for him, and watch his clear eyes brim with joy as his lifelong dream came true?

Or did he just want to _know_ , with certainty, so that he could move on with his wreck of a life, what _exactly_ Aziraphale’s whole deal was? Yes. Information was surely all he wanted. That certainly seemed like the most logical and least emotionally-laden explanation for why Crowley was pressing the button on his phone’s speed-dial for CrowleyCorp’s exclusive high-end concierge service, something he tried very hard to not do, ever.

“It’s me. Junior. Listen, I need someone who can track a person down— discreetly— and get me some hard information on him… I have a few names he uses, aliases… No, no, I don’t have any photographs. I could, er, describe him… Alright, very well...”

Crowley held the phone away from his head, grimacing as execrable hold music burbled through the speakers. The concierge was transferring him to a highly-regarded, highly-priced organization that specialized in tricky personal cases such as these.

“What am I _doing,”_ moaned Crowley in a flash of self-awareness, and was about a half-second away from hanging up the phone when finally the music ended with a _click_ and a soft voice on the other end of the line said, “Good afternoon, Pendulum Investigations.”

Within a few minutes Crowley had arranged for one of Pendulum’s senior investigators to meet him at his apartment later that evening, get briefed on the case, and begin utilizing their “special research methods” to find his missing man.

He leaned back in the driver’s seat and pressed his shades into his head until his face burned with the pressure.

***

At first Crowley thought the girl at his door was food delivery; she was wearing a teal bicycle helmet and carrying a large, utilitarian black bag.

“That my Chinese? Thanks, I’ll—” Crowley reached out for the bag and was surprised when she jerked it out of his reach.

It took a long, highly awkward moment of her giving him the stink-eye for him to remember about the _other_ thing he’d arranged to have show up at his flat tonight.

“Ohhhhhh, you must be the—”

“Anathema Device,” said the girl, extending her hand. “Pendulum Investigations.”

“Pleasure,” said Crowley, though that was just out of politeness, as at this point he was experiencing serious doubts about his decision to try and track Aziraphale down, and really would have preferred if she’d been bringing his Chinese.

Crowley watched as she began looking around for place to get situated. The moldering couch apparently did not meet her standards, for instead she took a seat on the hardwood floor and motioned for Crowley to join her.

He lowered himself to the ground reluctantly, a suspicion growing within him that the concierge had sent him an _intern._ This girl looked about twenty-two— certainly not the grizzled, retired policeman with plentiful bounty hunting experience that he’d been hoping for.

And she was _American._ Ugh.

“Describe him to me,” said Anathema. She had taken off her helmet and was… lighting candles? Spreading out a map of London on the floor, and opening a small tin full of crayons?

“Well, he’s a little shorter than me, about the same age,” Crowley began, feeling very stupid at this point, “quite a pointy little nose, coming right off his face, like so… Blonde hair, almost white, looks like he’s been electrocuted a bit—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, looking up from her handiwork back to Crowley, “but… have we met before?”

He looked at her. There was something about her that certainly seemed familiar, but he didn’t want to come right out and say that she reminded him strongly of one of the teenage prostitutes off the teatime soap that was often playing at the chip shop.

“No,” he said, “I’m sure we haven’t. You probably just recognized me from the news.”

She cleared her throat and got back to work, making a detailed crayon sketch based on Crowley’s description that, to his surprise, came out so accurately that he had to restrain himself from asking if he could keep it.

Anathema then had Crowley recount the exact routes he’d taken with Aziraphale that morning and the night prior, which she dutifully transferred in red crayon to the map.  

“I’m sorry, but— why do you need to do all this? And why do I need to be here for it?” Crowley asked skeptically after a few more minutes of strange questions, and stranger items emerging from Anathema’s bag.

Anathema looked up at him seriously, and then down to glance at the case file on her cobalt-blue clipboard.

“Right, this was a CrowleyCorp concierge service referral,” she said after a moment. “Did they not tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Pendulum is an occult investigation service,” she said, smiling winsomely. “Those ‘special research methods’ the receptionist probably mentioned to you are based around highly refined magical methods, such as ley-line tracking and aura manipulation. Everything I’m doing here is giving me the basic ingredients for the spells I’ll be using to find your mystery man.”

“Oh,” said Crowley, very tempted to just lie down on the floor then and there. He was already sitting on it, it would hardly take any additional effort to go ahead and give up fully. Really? An _occult investigator?_ He supposed the next thing he knew, she’d be telling him that Aziraphale really _had_ been a phantom, summoned straight from some dusty corner of another dimension solely in order to torture him, Anthony J. Crowley, Jr., in _particular._

“Of course,” Anathema continued, “we also have reliable contacts in the highest ranks of Parliament, Scotland Yard, and MI6, and a network of informants scattered around the city.”

“Oh. That’s all right, then,” Crowley said, back on more familiar territory now.

Anathema rustled around in her black bag and pulled out a small glass vial. “Can you spit into this for me?”

Crowley sighed. It was going to be a long night.

***

The next week passed, as weeks do, but Crowley could find no solace whatsoever in his usual hermetic routine. Even the empty calories of the Number 13 Deluxe didn’t fill him up like they used to.

He found himself idly Googling the best restaurants in his neighborhood, which must have confused the hell out of his ad algorithm, which had long ago adapted itself to a subservient lifestyle of sending Crowley only the best in fast food promotions and trashy self-help book recommendations.

He found himself scrolling through auction websites, looking for beautiful and rare books, imagining the look on Aziraphale’s face when he received them, going so far as to type in bids for thousands of pounds in the little window before hastily closing out of the app so he couldn’t do something he regretted.

And, of course, he dialed up Pendulum Investigations each morning to check for any news, usually while he was brushing his teeth.

“Mr. Crowley. I’ve told you, our most senior investigators are hard at work on your case. When we know, you’ll know,” said the receptionist severely on the eighth day in a row of no news, before hanging up.

Crowley spat into the sink and rubbed his eyes. He looked into the mirror. He was long past the days of wishing he’d like what he saw there, wishing for some kind of miracle to happen that would allow him to live with himself as he was, live with the things he’d done.

But for a moment, when he had been watching the morning sun fall across Aziraphale’s back on that heavenly morning, he’d thought that maybe if he could wake up to a sight like that every day, things would be just a little easier.

***

Nobody even bothered to call him first. He had to hear about it from a BBC alert on his phone, later that day.

_ANTHONY CROWLEY, SR. DEAD AT 91 - SPECIAL REPORT ON STATE OF CROWLEY CORPORATION TO FOLLOW_

Crowley sat there, stunned, and began to scroll through the obituary. It was the kind of painfully exhaustive memorial article that was written the moment a still-living public figure turned 70 and updated every year afterwards, adding on the type of paragraphs that tended to be subheaded “Controversies” and “Illness” and “Second and Third Marriages” and suchlike.

Halfway through, Crowley received a call from his father’s valet, who verbally delivered a stilted invitation to the funeral before handing the phone off to his father’s lawyer. The lawyer recited some half-hearted platitudes, and then kindly informed Crowley that his presence would be required at CrowleyCorp headquarters in precisely one hour, for the presentation of his father’s will.

As someone who spent most of his days in a state of abject dread, Crowley was quite used to feeling terrible, but it was an altogether foreign type of uncomfortable apprehension that swirled up within him as he began to process all of this.

He’d been waiting for his father to shuffle off his rusty, diseased mortal coil for decades and decades. It had begun to feel rather purgatorial long ago, this half-life he’d forced himself into upon resignation from his post at CrowleyCorp. Unable to extract himself from the legal strictures of the draconian company contracts he’d signed carelessly in a drugged-out bliss at age 21 (so frothingly excited to take hold of his birthright, and change the world), Crowley’s post-CrowleyCorp existence had been at the mercy of paragraphs of legalese, like so many little snakes wrapping themselves tightly around his every limb, the implicit threat of venom haunting any movement he made.

The contracts had stated that, were he ever to be unable to fulfill his ongoing responsibilities as resident boy-genius lead of CrowleyCorp’s R&D team, he would be subject to a nasty non-compete clause that would fully restrict him from working not only in a development capacity at any of CrowleyCorp’s competitors, but from working _anywhere,_ for pay _or_ for free, using _any_ element of the skillset he’d spent his days at CrowleyCorp working from. This included computer programming, biz-dev, 3D modeling, electrical engineering, manufacturing, and dozens of others, essentially restricting Crowley’s potential non-CrowleyCorp lines of work solely to “professional descendant.” There were also non-disparagement clauses, arbitration clauses, return-of-property clauses, and other various sharp-fanged legal elements dotted throughout.

The last revision of the contracts, from when Crowley was about 29, had been done under the assumption, unshakeable at the time, that Crowley would wholly take over the company from his father when the old man either retired or passed away, whichever came first. It detailed the disbursement of compensation in the sole form of CrowleyCorp stock, and restricted the vesting of said stock until the date that such an event came to pass.

This was insurance, a clever little idea courtesy of the old man’s lawyer. By tying his son’s fortunes to his own life, Anthony Crowley Sr. ensured he’d never have to witness Junior besmirching the family name using the money he’d made at CrowleyCorp.

Lastly, the contract proscribed that, in the event that any “event” should befall Crowley making him unable to work, such as illness, he would be issued a CrowleyCorp credit line in order to sustain his lifestyle and expenses, such as it were. This clause also specified that under the confines of this “event” Crowley would be disallowed from leaving the country, in order to “maintain focus on recovery and return to work.”

It was this clause that came into effect two years later when Crowley unexpectedly threw his laptop through the window of his very large office and declared himself no longer a participant in their “fascist technocracy.” (Or something of the sort. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. He’d been very drunk.)

So when he’d left CrowleyCorp that day, the culmination of a months-long moral crisis, disavowing himself of all of his work for the company and everything his family had ever stood for, he’d walked straight from one cage into another.

There had been so many days he’d spent daydreaming of what he’d do when the zombie bugger finally kicked the bucket— the trips he’d take, the charities he’d fund, the new companies he’d found.

But now that the moment was finally here, and the prospect of having unfettered access to not only eleven years’ worth of salary but (as the sole heir of a long-widowed billionaire) his full inheritance was shining before him, Crowley was utterly paralyzed.

A second call came through moments later and interrupted his reverie, this time a nervous-sounding executive assistant who’d been shunted to funeral planning duty and wanted to know where to send the car to pick Crowley up on Sunday.

“Don’t bother,” he said, hanging up on her.

He returned to the BBC obituary and had gotten as far as the 2003 insider trading trials before receiving yet another call.  

“Listen, if this is about the bloody funeral, I thought I’d made myself clear, I’m _not_ going to—”

“Crowley, it’s me.”

Crowley stiffened at the sound of Anathema’s voice. He could hardly dare to hope, but asked anyway:

“Have you found him?”

Anathema sighed.

“Yeah, but…”

“But _what?_ Come on, girl, I’m paying you for this. Where is he?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“ _Try me,”_ snarled Crowley through clenched teeth.

Anathema coughed gently, and said: “He was booked into Islington Police Station yesterday afternoon. Charged with petty larceny and impersonation. Being held on £10,000 bond. Under his legal name, Ezra Epstein. I’m sending over the mugshot, it has his case number on it...”

Crowley drew his phone away from his ear in time to see the image come through. His breath caught in his throat.

It was him in the photo, most certainly— that same shock of hair, the same round eyes, the same face that made Crowley want to buy expensive paintings and real estate— but this “Ezra Epstein” was a version of Aziraphale far removed from the elegant, witty man that Crowley had spent such blissful hours with. This man looked haggard, _plain_. He was wearing a white t-shirt that looked comically out of place on a body that seemed purpose-built for another time and place entirely.

“Who _are_ you, Aziraphale?” Crowley murmured at the photo, bewildered. Petty larceny? Impersonation? What could that possibly mean? What had he done?

“Hello? Mr. Crowley, are you still there? Are you alright?” came a tinny voice from the phone speaker. Crowley had forgotten he was still on the line with Anathema.

“Yes, fine,” Crowley said brusquely, quickly bringing the phone back up to his ear. “Money will be posted to Pendulum’s account by morning. Thanks for your help.”

£10,000? That was nothing, compared to what he could do for Aziraphale now that his father was dead. It all seemed suddenly, wonderfully, beautifully fated.

Against every one of his better instincts, Crowley began to have ideas _._

**ELSEWHERE**

 

In the bookshop, the girl-thing had begun to hover slightly off of the table, a pink glow suffusing the air around her. “Oh,” she breathed, her eyes fluttering backwards into her head, as events proceeding in another place entirely began to fill her body with great surges of power.

There was a noise from the front of the bookshop, and the girl-thing’s eyes flew open at the sound. Nothing could stop her now— if there was to be another interruption, she would simply incorporate him, her, or it into the flow of her feeding, just like that poor girl who’d stumbled inside moments ago.

“Aziraphale, darling, I thought I’d bring by some marmalade, Shadwell doesn’t want any of it, says it’ll give him ulcers…”

The door to the back room creaked open again. This time it was an older woman, tightly clutching a pair of mason jars wrapped with blue ribbon. Upon seeing the sight of the girl-thing presiding over the prone bodies of Anathema, Aziraphale, and Crowley, the woman let out a delicate shriek.

“Want to join the fun?” said the girl-thing to the woman, raising a hand into the air towards her. It wasn’t really a question.

Madame Tracy frowned. “If you’re going to magic me onto the ground with the rest of them,” she said practically, “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me put down the marmalade. Is that alright?”

The girl-thing was minorly dumbstruck. “I… I don’t see why not…” she stammered.

Carefully, Madame Tracy set down the two jars on top of a stable stack of books, straightened out her blouse, and then looked back up at the girl-thing.

“Well,” said Madame Tracy. “Go on, then. I was planning on a kip once I got back to my flat anyways.”

The girl-thing twisted her hand in the air, and Madame Tracy slumped to the ground.

Closing her eyes once more, the creature inhaled deeply, delighting in what she saw...

 

**LATER**

Crowley had established quite a good lurk in the far corner of the Islington Police Station’s waiting room— good enough to watch without being noticed as two police officers brought an underdressed and dehydrated-looking Aziraphale out from the back and had him sign a bunch of papers at the front desk.

He was too far away to hear what they were saying, but could make a pretty good guess that his jig was about to be up once one of the officers began to mime “sunglasses” in response to a query from Aziraphale.

Sure enough, Aziraphale immediately looked up and over across the room, and spotted Crowley in his corner, next to the wilting fig leaf plant.

Crowley gave him the suavest wave he could muster.

Aziraphale crossed the room, and for a horrible moment Crowley thought he was just going to leave, go straight out the door without acknowledging Crowley at all.  

But then he stopped in front of Crowley, looked him up and down, and heaved a great sigh.

“I wish you hadn’t seen me like this,” he said. And Crowley could see what he meant, of course— his five-o-clock shadow, the red raised welts on his wrist where handcuffs must have been rubbing for hours— but none of that changed the fact that Crowley was so relieved to have found Aziraphale, and to have him standing before him, that he could have ascended to a higher plane, right then and there, leaving his clothes a mundane puddle on the ground.

“After the trouble I went to,” said Crowley, “I think I deserve to see you any way I like.”

This had probably been the wrong thing to say, yet again. Aziraphale folded his arms, tapping a finger on the sleeve of his t-shirt, managing to make looking annoyed so effortlessly, unbearably beautiful.

“How did you find me?” he asked. “I assume you have access to all the CCTV cameras your family’s company owns—”

“No, _no._ It wasn’t that, I swear. I would never– I promise.”

“Then how—”

“I hired an occult investigator. I think she used a spell.”

This seemed to draw Aziraphale up short. The ghost of a smile flickered around the corners of his mouth, but was quickly extinguished.

“Really,” he said, straight-faced.

“I really did,” said Crowley.

“Well, you _shouldn’t have,”_ said Aziraphale severely.

“If I hadn’t,” Crowley pointed out, “you’d still be sitting in a jail cell right now.”

“I assure you, that state of affairs would not have lasted long.”

Crowley groaned in exasperation. How was it possible that this man was somehow managing to make being _rescued_ seem like an _inconvenience?_

“So,” said Crowley, struggling for the upper hand, “ _Ezra—”_

“Oh, please don’t call me that,” said Aziraphale sourly. “I _liked_ Aziraphale. I had a whole little backstory for him, all drawn up… ” And for a moment his expression softened, and Crowley’s knees went just a little bit weak.

“I just don’t understand,” said Crowley, and now the betrayal he felt was creeping into his voice, coloring it with a savage bend. “Why all the fake names? Who _are_ you? Was any of it real? The fussy clothes, the bookshop dream— was it all just... someone you made up? A _character?_ ”

Aziraphale gave him a look, face hardened once more. “You might as well ask me what I did to get myself arrested. I know that’s what you _really_ want to know.”

“Alright, alright. That, too.”

“But why should I have to explain myself? To _you,_ of all people?” Aziraphale countered. “The _audacity_ . Using your dirty money to bail me out, after I gave you my _definitive_ position on such things, without ever even _considering_ that I had my own means of extricating myself from my _own_ messes? I am a grown man, Crowley.”

“You’re bluffing,” said Crowley. “What means? You’ve got nothing of the sort. You’re flat broke. You’d’ve sat in there for days.”

“How do you know?” Aziraphale asked, affronted.

Crowley shrugged. “I don’t, not really,” he confessed. “You know, once I’d got your name, your _real_ name, I could’ve just looked you up,” Crowley said. “Gone through back-channels, found out your whole history before coming here, dangled it over your head like a cat toy...”

Aziraphale frowned. “But... you didn’t?”

“I didn’t,” Crowley confirmed. “I wanted to hear it from you. Now, come on. Tell me.”

Aziraphale’s eyes darted nervously behind him towards the front desk of the police station, where an officer was ostensibly seated and filling out paperwork but whose pen was most definitely not moving and whose ears were most certainly pricked (insofar as human ears can be pricked) in the direction of the two men in the far corner.

“Alright. But not here.”

They found a bench in nearby Culpeper Park. There were birds singing, and trees swaying in the spring breeze. It was the first time Crowley had sat in a park in years.

In the daytime light, filtering down through the trees to their bench, Crowley almost imagined he could see the outline of a bow-tie formed by glimmering dust particles around Aziraphale’s bare neck as he sat beside him.

Aziraphale cleared his throat delicately, and said: “Would it surprise you to know that I often feel very little affection for, or obligation towards, my fellow human beings?”

“I— well, yes, yes it would,” Crowley was forced to admit. “Very much so.”

“I’m a lover of humanity, in the greatest, purest, most general sense,” Aziraphale continued, “and of oh, so many things _created_ by people, art and food and music and books, but…” He sighed, and Crowley thought he saw in the other man’s sea-glass eyes a great and perilous cliff, one that Aziraphale was forever just a step away from falling down from.

“When you’ve been through what I’ve been through... when you’ve seen in every razor-sharp detail the way that people can act around those they perceive to be lesser than them… When you’ve been kept out, locked away, denied every opportunity… Misanthropy, unfortunately, becomes an unavoidable basal state.”

He avoided looking at Crowley, instead examining his fingernails, which had somehow escaped the abuses of the jail cell to remain perfectly manicured.

“The social contract is quite a nasty piece of work,” he went on. “It’s never quite proven itself to be of any use to me. Neither has the name I was born with, or the details of my upbringing. So I simply did away with them. I’m not owed anything by anyone, and I’m in nobody’s debt either. It’s quite freeing.”

He smiled up at the tree branches, waving gently above them in the breeze, looking for all the world like he was utterly grateful to be alive. Crowley wondered what that felt like.

“Once I’d unbound myself from certain… expectations, early on,” Aziraphale continued, “it seemed only sensible for me to stay that way. To take what I needed, when I needed it. To devise methods that would keep me fed, watered, satisfied, entertained, _fulfilled,_ without enslaving myself to the elements of society I’d deemed incompatible with my ideals.”

“Methods?” Crowley asked. “You mean, _criminal_ methods.”

“For example,” Aziraphale continued placidly, “the charges you freed me from stemmed from certain actions I took last week, including some quick pickpocketing work in St. James’ Park to attain money, and the subsequent construction of a false building inspector credential in order to access the interior of a West End theater.”

“But _why?”_

Aziraphale looked rather pleased with himself. “I wanted to see a play.”

Crowley groaned. “A gentleman thief,” he said incredulously. “You bastard.”

“I have a range of strategies,” Aziraphale says, “not all of which involve theft, if you please. The night we met—”

“You were trying to dine and dash.”

“—I was _workshopping_ a new sleight of mind routine, combining subtle emotional cues with exaggerated body language to produce my desired outcome: a free meal. Which I would have gotten, if you hadn’t so gracefully interrupted me.”

“What d’you mean, sleight of _mind?_ Isn’t it sleight of hand?” Crowley said, more than a little bit bowled over.

Aziraphale sighed; reached out, and stroked the side of Crowley’s face, running his fingers over where the metal of the frame of his shades met his skin. They sat for a moment like that, Crowley resisting the urge to lean into Aziraphale’s lightest of touches.

“Humans are creatures of circumstance. We are who we choose to be,” Aziraphale said neatly. “Every name I take is a choice I’m making. A road that I am taking myself down, with complete confidence. I recommend you try it sometime. I get the sense that you’ve long given up on choosing for yourself.”

Crowley shook his head. “God, I— I wish I could believe you,” he said. “And I tried it once. I did. I tried to choose, choose who I thought I wanted to be– the biggest choice of my life, the _only_ choice— but it was a _trap,_ Aziraphale, that’s how I ended up like _this.”_ He gestured at himself. “No freedom. No hope. No real _life_ to speak of, a horrible half-existence, caught between who I _thought_ I was going to be once I’d left the company, denounced everything I did there— and the horrid reality of how they’ve been able to keep me in check for all these years.”

“Simply circumstance,” said Aziraphale. “And circumstances can change.”

“Fuck your circumstance!” Crowley found himself hissing. “I’ve been a caged fucking animal. I'm at the end of a rope I should've fallen off a long time ago. But now— but now it’s _different,_ it’s all changed, and I—”

Aziraphale looked at him, confused.

“My father died today,” said Crowley, and he ran his hands down his face, still not believing it had really happened.

Aziraphale’s expression slipped into a compassion so heartfelt that Crowley nearly turned around, for surely there was someone else more deserving of such vibrant tenderness sitting right behind him.

“I’m _so_ sorry to hear that, dear,” said Aziraphale.

“Don’t be. You know who he is. You know what he’s done.”

“That’s all very well,” said Aziraphale gently, “but he’s still your father.”

Crowley didn’t press the subject. “I’m supposed to be off hearing his will get read, right now,” he said.

“Right _now?_ And you’re missing it—?” Aziraphale said, the _for me?_ at the end of his sentence almost explicit enough to be audible.

“Right now,” said Crowley. “But why would I bother? I know what’s going to happen. I’m finally going to be free.”

He took Aziraphale’s hands in his.

“Come away with me. I can leave, now, finally— I can leave the country, leave this mess behind. I’ll be getting access to my full inheritance, no strings attached— I can cash out all of my company stocks, invest them into green energy and third-world countries— I can start a _new_ company, one that works to undo everything CrowleyCorp has done, everything _I’ve_ done— I can make it all better— and I want to take you with me. I want you to be with me. You don’t have to steal anymore, you don’t have to get arrested, I can give you what you need—”   

“Crowley, I can’t. I won’t,” said Aziraphale, drawing his hands away. “I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t know what you thought it was— all of that, the other day, before I found out. I don’t know what you think I can be for you— but it’s not going to work. Not for me.”

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders now. “But didn’t you _feel_ it? That night. Us, together— there was _something,_ something I’ve never—”

Aziraphale lifted his hands and placed them for a heavenly second on top of Crowley’s, before lifting Crowley’s arms away and replacing them ever so gently at his sides.

He shook his head, and there was that smile, again, playing around his mouth, the lines of it forming a work of art that Crowley felt like he’d known his whole life.

“But where are you going to _go?”_ Crowley said.

“Where I always go,” said Aziraphale. “Somewhere else. Not too far, not to close. This is a big city, Crowley. You can fit so many different versions of yourself inside of it, and they’ll never cross paths, not if you make your way with care.”

Crowley kissed Aziraphale, then, thinking with the realism of a suffering man that if he didn’t do it now he might never get to again. Aziraphale still tasted as good as Crowley had dreamed he did, every night since the one they’d spent together. And Aziraphale kissed him back, and for a few seconds, everything was all right.

But then he drew away.

“Please—” said Crowley. “Please. Just tell me where I can find you. If you get arrested again— if they take you somewhere, and I never know—”

Aziraphale bit his lip. He was fighting something inside his head, and Crowley just wanted to reach in there and set it free, like fixing a printer jam. There was silence, for a moment.

“My sister,” Aziraphale said, finally. “Tracy Shadwell. Sometimes I stay with her— I don’t— well, there’s always a chance I’ll have told her where I am. If you can find her, she may be able to get a message to me.”

He stood up from the bench. “I suppose thanks are in order,” he said, “for bailing me out. But I don’t need your charity. I hope you can find peace, with yourself, with your money, now that you… well, I’m sure there’s someone out there who could make better use of it than me.”

And for the second time in as many weeks, he walked away from Crowley, and disappeared back into his city.

***

Crowley didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there on the park bench, utterly unmoored, before a homeless man came rumbling by, pushing a cart laden with great bulging bags of trash and junk. He stopped in front of Crowley.

“The end is nigh,” said the man, one eye pointed at Crowley and the other off on a distant journey to the other end of the park. “The end of this world and all things inside! It has already begun!”

“You’re telling me,” muttered Crowley, distractedly. He was thinking about the way Aziraphale had looked down and to the side, when Crowley had asked him to go away with him. The tension in Aziraphale’s shoulders under Crowley’s hands, as if— Crowley let himself hope— he didn’t really _mean_ it, when he’d said no.

The man didn’t shuffle on like these kinds of folks usually did, in Crowley’s experience, after delivering their schizoid missive. He stood there, looming over Crowley, and extended a finger half-wrapped in a raggedy glove.

“And you are the cause! You are the cause of it all! The great unraveling! The creature behind the curtain—”

“Oh, will you fuck off?” Crowley snapped. Getting personal, really? His father’s body was barely cold and now even the riff-raff of the London streets had switched seamlessly over to targeting Crowley himself, the very heir of the hour.

The man flinched, and began to roll his cart away. “You’ll see!” he croaked at Crowley. “Beware! Beware the end!”

Crowley rolled his eyes. His phone rang in his pocket; he pulled it out and recognized a CrowleyCorp office line number. Probably about the stupid funeral. Or the will. Either way, Crowley wanted nothing to do with it, especially not right now, so he hit ignore. They had all his information, anyway. If they really needed his signature on something, to disburse the inheritance, perhaps, they could track him down to his apartment.

**TWO DAYS LATER**

 

This time, Crowley had almost been positive it was his curry.

“Sir, I’m under strict orders _not_ to leave without _visual_ confirmation that you have watched the _entire_ video will,” said the CrowleyCorp courier at his door, sternly brandishing a paper-thin tablet in Crowley’s direction. “I’ve been authorized to use physical force.”

Crowley had a hard time picturing what kind of “physical force” this slimy-looking man could be capable of imparting, or at least he did until he spotted a CrowleyCorp-branded electric stun gun clipped to the courier’s awfully unstylish utility belt.

So he folded the tablet onto its stand, turned it on, and walked over to set it atop his unmade bed, which he then sprawled across rather seductively, in a shameless attempt to make the courier as uncomfortable as possible.

Ignoring the rumbles of foreboding emerging from somewhere around his kidney, Crowley hit PLAY on the file.

He couldn’t help but wince immediately at the sight of his late father’s decrepit face filling up the screen, like some kind of noxious death-bloom, able to suck out all the life and light in the room even whilst encoded as mere pixels. The old man was in his office on the top floor of the Crowley Building, sitting in his wheelchair, silhouetted against the London skyline in late evening.

“If you’re watching this, Anthony, my son,” his father began, “it means that I’m dead.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Crowley muttered.

“I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, Junior, when you stepped down, ten years ago,” continued the old man. “I was willing to _tolerate_ your dilettantism, your rejection of the principles of this family, this company, and this _country—_ for so long as I lived, and I knew you remained close at hand, I could maintain hope that you’d come to your senses, and rejoin me at the helm as we transform the nation and beyond in our vision of justice and liberty.”

Crowley made comical retching sounds at the courier, drawing a dramatic finger across his throat. The courier, stone-faced, jabbed a finger in the direction of the screen. Crowley rolled his eyes, but forced himself to turn back to the video.

“...I hope you know how much it pained me, as your father, to have to keep you on such a tight leash, contractually speaking,” the old man was saying on the screen, “but when you signed those papers you were out of control. Overdosing, sleeping around. Splashing yourself across the front pages of tabloids. Embarrassing me, embarrassing the company. So we did what we had to do.”

“But despite the flaws in your character that were apparent during those years, you let the whole world witness your rise. Eleven glorious years of the most innovative and advanced moves forward in defense and surveillance technology England has ever seen. All thanks to you. All thanks to your tireless work, your brilliant mind, your devotion to the cause. When I think about how much further along we’d be if you’d continued to build upon your first decade of work, I shed a tear. I really do, son. This company needs you, Anthony. This country needs you. We must stop the forces that threaten our freedoms. Criminal elements, radicals, liberals.”  

“So, here in my legally binding last will and testament, I am delivering to you your final choice. Your CrowleyCorp stock holdings and your inheritance from me will only be released to your control under the condition that you willingly resume your role at the company, and your rightful place as my heir. You were born to do this work, Anthony. Without it, you are nothing. _Nothing,_ do you hear me, boy?”

His father’s voice had grown to a roar, but then he sputtered into a coughing fit, deep, wretched death-coughs that wracked his whole body. A hand appeared from offscreen to hand the old man an oxygen mask; then a jump-cut, and his father resumed his speech, sound hoarser, frailer.

“You have twenty-four hours upon being informed of these conditions to make your decision,” the old man said on the screen, speaking his evil even from the grave. “If you fail to resume your work, your stock holdings will be sold back to the company, and your inheritance portfolio will be liquidated and used to fund our expansion into the European market.”

“Your holding pattern is over, Anthony. It is time to face up to who you really are, or face the consequences.”

There was silence in the flat. The courier walked over to the bed and retrieved the tablet.

“Twenty-four hours, Mr. Crowley,” he said, checking his watch. “That’s… 9:30 PM, tomorrow the 30th. Here’s my card. Call me when you’re ready to accept the conditions.”

Crowley slowly reached up to take the card.

“And by the way, your father’s business manager asked me to inform you that your accounts have been frozen until such time as you make your choice.” The courier smiled a truly shameless smile. “So there’s to be no funny business.”

The courier left. Crowley was alone. His father’s creaky, bone-dry voice was ringing in his ears.

_Without it, you are nothing._

He thought about Aziraphale. Aziraphale, for who all intents and purposes, had nothing. Aziraphale, who seemed happier than Crowley had ever been, even when he had everything.

And he really _had_ had everything, back in his CrowleyCorp days. Power. Money. Access. More than a little bit of fame.

But he’d never wanted anyone like this, back then. Certainly he hadn’t wanted anyone or anything this badly since he’d quit, since his life became one big game of not allowing himself to want anything at all.

He fell asleep, a little while later, his phone unlocked on his chest, open to Aziraphale’s mugshot, the only evidence he had that the man was anything other than his own personal ghost.

***

The next day broke clean and clear, a perfect London morning, and Crowley stirred from a dream involving Aziraphale’s fingers and certain applications thereof. It was a blissful thirty seconds before he remembered that he was on a deadline.

He had wondered, idly, on the day he stormed out of the CrowleyCorp offices and proclaimed himself a free man, who he’d be without his job. Without the company. He hadn’t known, then, really, about the contracts. The innocence of youth.

As it turned out, rejecting everything you once stood for was a full-time job. Spending as little money as possible on oneself to fulfill a commitment to an ideological stance was a full-time job. Finding attractive men to lavish for periods of twelve to twenty-four hours at a time before their moral compasses overwhelmed their arousal was a full-time job.

Defending oneself from the continued onslaught of media inquiry, paternal pressure, and suicidal guilt at your own actions was a full time job.

And lying around feeling sorry for oneself for ten years was a full-time job, when it came right down to it.

 _Choices._ That was Aziraphale’s whole thing, wasn’t it? Making choices. God, Crowley needed to see him— needed him to talk him through this madness— he needed to be _held,_ held tightly, held _together_ by someone who already had it all figured out, which Aziraphale certainly seemed to, him and his sticky fingers and his _philosophizing_.

But that was the paradox of it all. Crowley was positive that he had nothing, _nothing_ to offer Aziraphale except for his money. He never had. He had nothing to bargain with now, no position to argue from. And _Crowley_ was the obsessed one— Aziraphale didn’t seem to care for him at all, and it wasn’t as if he _should—_ not after one night and one morning of what had seemed, superficially, to be bliss, plus a police-station confrontation like something out of a 9PM drama. No, this was all in Crowley’s head, it must be.

He’d only have the money if he accepted the job, if he went back to work for CrowleyCorp, if he fulfilled his god-given destiny to crack his knuckles and get back to developing the world’s most sophisticated surveillance systems and facial recognition algorithms, if he went back on everything that he’d promised himself so long ago.

If he went back, he’d be as good as dead to Aziraphale. And to himself.

Again, his father’s voice: _Without it, you are nothing._

But... maybe that was it. Maybe that was the secret. _Maybe—_

***

Crowley rocketed down every street in Soho that morning like a man on fire, looking for a glimpse of white-gold hair and perfect posture amist the humming throngs. He searched every restaurant patio, every bookshop, every tiny little shop selling ceramics and magnifying glasses and other things that Crowley could quite easily imagine Aziraphale being fond of.

Dimly, he remembered thinking quite recently how running through the streets looking for Aziraphale would be an inanely stupid idea. But the person who’d thought that now seemed like another man entirely to Crowley. He’d do anything, now, to find Aziraphale, including overexert himself physically in public.

Once again, there was a clock ticking in the background of his life. He went back to his flat, and called up dozens of police stations in London, asking for men who fit Aziraphale’s description. As it turned out, many of the men and women on the phone were quite familiar with the man in question, referring to him with such colorful epithets as “the Haggerston Highwayman” and “the Bethnal Bandit.” One extremely Cockney police chief even went on a small rant, which ended with “that bloody bastard, who does he think he is, Dick Turpin?”

But despite Aziraphale’s evident notoriety, nobody was able to tell Crowley that the man was in their custody. Crowley had to take just a moment to be in awe of Aziraphale’s demonstrated skill with evading the law, before diving back into his search.

As a last resort, Crowley searched up the name Aziraphale had given him for his sister, but was unable come up with anything concrete. And he certainly couldn’t access the concierge again now, not when his accounts had been frozen and he had no way of paying for another occult investigation.

There had to be a way… there _had_ to be a way.

And then he remembered: the girl. Anathema Device. He had her mobile number, she’d called him from it to deliver the news about Aziraphale.

Hands shaking, he scrolled through his call history to find the lone American number, with the Los Angeles area code.

She picked up after a few rings.

“Hello? Who’s this—”

“Anathema, I need an address. Tracy Shadwell. Older woman, maybe 50s, 60s. Maiden name of Epstein, probably, if that matters— lives somewhere in or near London, I just—”

“Mr. Crowley, I’m sorry, but all case requests need to go through our central dispatcher,” Anathema interrupted.

“This isn’t a case, it’s a favor,” Crowley said, softening his tone as much as he possibly could, hoping that Anathema would be willing to be owed a favor by a man whose disgusting couch she’d pointedly refused to sit on last week.

“Well… hm. Alright. Okay. Just hold on a moment. I should be able to access that information right away from here.”

She put him on hold; no music this time, just the dead air of Crowley’s barren flat and the roar of his thoughts to keep him company while he waited.  

After a minute or two:

“Crowley? I’ve got an address for you.”

Crowley scribbled down the address on the back of a fast food receipt he found in his bedside bin, thanked Anathema before hanging up, and was out the door with his shades on, not letting himself think at all about where he was headed.  

***

The address Anathema had given him led Crowley to a run-down semidetached home in the western outskirts of the city, east of the M25 and north of Heathrow. This was the furthest he’d driven from his flat in recent memory.

There was a neon sign in the front room window, depicting a small crystal ball glowing pink and purple. He stared at it as he rang the doorbell.

The door opened to reveal a slim older woman in a dressing gown, her hair done up in curlers. She looked Crowley up and down, as though mentally scrolling through a multiple-choice list of all the possible reasons an impossibly skinny man dressed in all black could be showing up at her home at 8PM on a Tuesday.

Seeming to settle on one, she said, “I’m sorry, if it’s Madame Tracy Draws Aside The Veil you’re looking for, you’ll have to make an appointment, I’ve got my online booking system all set up now…”

“I need to talk to Azir— er, Ezra. Your brother. Is he here?” Crowley tried to look around the woman’s head towards the interior of her house, but spotted nothing but beige carpet and a few quite ugly stained-glass lamps.

“Ah,” Tracy Shadwell said. She pursed her lips in a way that struck Crowley as quite Aziraphale-esque; the family resemblance was strong. “You better come on in, then.”

She guided him into her sitting room and motioned for him to take a seat. “I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, love, for having come all this way,” she said, and bustled off into the kitchen.

Crowley tapped his knees with his hands impatiently, looking around him. The room was shabby, but in the kind of lived-in way that spoke to years of happy memories made here. Knick-knacks lined the walls, surrounding framed photos that Crowley couldn’t quite force himself to get up and look at, scared of who he’d see looking back out at him. He was closer than ever to the truth of who Aziraphale was, to the truth of whatever it was Aziraphale meant to him, and he worried he’d be blinded if he looked for too long.

Tracy returned after a few minutes with the tea, setting a cup and saucer down in front of Crowley before filling one for herself and sitting down on the seat opposite him.

Crowley didn’t drink. He stared at Tracy through his shades, willing her to tell him what he wanted–  _needed_ to hear.

“I’m sorry,” Tracy said, finally, “but he’s not here. Hasn’t been by in ages.”

“Do you know where he is? Where I can find him?” Crowley asked.

She shook her head sadly. “If I did, I’d be a happier woman,” she said. “It’s hard, being his sister. I can only imagine what it’s like for you lot.”

“My… lot?” Crowley asked.

Tracy chuckled. “Oh, love. You’re not the first one to come looking for him, you know. He rather has that effect on people.”

She sipped her tea while Crowley contemplated this.

“Our parents took it quite horribly when he came out,” Tracy said, as conversationally as though she was asking him how he was liking his tea. “They disowned him. Threw him out. They were lovely people, but so traditional… Our community was quite close-knit in those days. There were certain responsibilities he was meant to perform, certain... expectations to live up to. I’m sure you can understand that, Mr. Crowley.”

Oh. So she knew who he was.

“And so we lost track of him for a while, we knew he was in the city, but what he was up to, it doesn’t bear thinking about … and my dear husband, may his memory be a blessing, was always on the lookout, checking in homeless shelters and such… Always worried he’d turn up on the news, dead or worse...”

Crowley wasn’t sure he wanted to be hearing this. “When did you see him last?” he asked, interrupting Tracy’s reminisces.

“Hmm,” she said. “Must’ve been…. Oh dear, must’ve been back in December. He’d just served two weeks for forging checks…”

“I see,” said Crowley, trying very hard not to sound like she’d let him down.

“I really am sorry I can’t help,” Tracy apologized again, “but he doesn’t have a mobile, as I’m sure you know. Best I can do is promise to let you know if he comes by.”

Crowley agreed, and wrote down his mobile number for Tracy on a napkin. He took a few sips of his tea, just to be polite, and then declared that he had to be getting on.

Tracy seemed disappointed he was leaving so soon. “Why don’t I do a reading for you, Mr. Crowley?” she asked. “Free of charge.”

“A reading—?”

“Tarot cards, darling.” She retrieved a large deck of cards from a side table and held them up, looking so pleased with herself already about the opportunity to read the fortune of someone who’d been on TV that Crowley couldn’t bring himself to deny her the pleasure.

“Oh— alright, I suppose,” mumbled Crowley.

He watched her lay out the cards with the same detached skepticism he’d aimed at Anathema’s occult interrogation. It must be nice, he thought, to believe in something. To believe in anything at all, really.

“Oh...! _”_ Tracy gasped suddenly.

“What? What is it?”

Tracy frowned at the cards spread out in front of her. “No, that can’t be right,” she said.

“Is it Aziraphale? Is he in trouble?”

“Who’s— Oh. Ezra. Dear me, the names get sillier each time.” She laughed gently to herself. “But no, love, it’s not…. Well, insofar as….”

She trailed off as she inspected the cards more closely, running delicate fingers across the images laid out on the table.

“Well, the cards seem to be saying… that the world is going to end tomorrow, and it’ll be because of… because of _you.”_  

She looked up at him. “Curious. Clear as day, that’s what the cards are saying. They’re very specific. I don’t suppose you know anything about this…?”

Crowley flashed back to the man in the park. The crazy man. Hadn’t he said something along those lines? World ending, because of him?

Maybe it was all a metaphor. Yes, that sounded about right. The end of the world— the end of Crowley’s world, if he didn’t make the right choice, something like that. Well, there wasn’t much he could do about that. Not without Aziraphale’s help.  

He thanked Tracy for the tea and got back in his car.

And on the way back to his flat, the clocked ticked over to 9:30, just like that.

Twenty-four hours. He’d made his choice.

His money was gone. Every connection to his family and to the company, severed. He imagined the feeling of the bits and bytes that made up his inheritance winging their way out of his father’s account and directly into the company coffers, bypassing his own completely.

He tried to bring up the appropriate emotions for an event like this, disappointment or sadness or wistful regret, but in an interesting turn of events he found himself feeling something strange. Something unfamiliar. Something… _hopeful._  

Because he’d made his choice. He knew, now, what he wanted to tell Aziraphale. And he didn’t know what he’d do if he never got the chance to.

**THE NEXT DAY**

Another afternoon, another phone call. It was probably one of his father’s representatives calling to confirm his abdication.

He pressed answer. “This is Crowley,” he said, with as much hatred in his voice as he could muster.

“Hullo, Mr. Crowley, it’s me. Tracy Shadwell. We met yesterday and—”

“Tracy,” said Crowley, “is it—?”

“It’s him, Mr. Crowley. He’s here.”

Oh. _Oh._

“Let me talk to him, can I talk—”

Tracy tutted gently over the phone. “Now, Mr. Crowley, you’ve got to be a gentleman about this. He hasn’t been home in months, so I’m preparing a nice dinner. Why don’t you stop by tonight, if you’d like to speak with him?”

“Yes– yes,” Crowley stuttered out.

“Very good,” said Tracy. “I’ll set the table for three.”

***

Crowley arrived as the sun was setting. Tracy greeted him at the door, showed him inside again.

“He’s upstairs,” said Tracy quietly. “First room on the right. Dinner in half an hour, I’ll give you boys some time to, er, check in with each other first.”

Crowley climbed the stairs to the second floor. He felt like he was pushing his way through a block of clear molasses, his limbs heavy in the thick, carpeted silence that blanketed his way forward.

He spotted Aziraphale before he’d even reached the top of the staircase. Through the open door of the first room on the right, he could see him sitting in an armchair, reading a book.

He was wearing a similar getup to the one he’d had on when Crowley first saw him, which sent a deep jolt of relief through Crowley’s gut. It hadn’t been a character after all. Crowley had known Aziraphale and it hadn’t been a lie. This was the man he’d taken home; this was the man he’d slept with; this was the man he’d fallen in love with, before they ever even touched.

“Nice room,” said Crowley, leaning against the open doorframe. And it was a nice room. It was clean, the only clutter the stacks of books crowding the shelves and out onto the rug. Art lined the walls, the same kind of respectable-looking pieces as downstairs.

“She keeps it for me,” said Aziraphale. He looked up at Crowley. “For when I come back. She’s always hoping I’ll come back, stay here. You know. Be a part of the family again.”

“Would you?” Crowley asked, coming inside the room. “I mean. Come back. Stay in one place for a while.” He wanted to tell him what he’d come here to tell him, but he wasn’t ready. Not yet.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” said Aziraphale, “so I suppose the time is drawing near. But…”

“But?”

Aziraphale looked up at him from the chair. “It’s a hard thing to give up,” he said. “The person you’ve been. The way you’ve lived. Even if if it’s hurting you.”

Crowley turned, inspecting the walls of the room. He ran a finger delicately over a metal object hanging from a nail. It was shaped like a hand, its fingers pointed downwards towards the floor. Delicate metal tracery filled its interior, supplemented by sparkling stones, and at its center a large, blue-pupiled eye.

“It’s a hamsa,” said Aziraphale quietly from behind Crowley. “Jewish amulet of protection.”

“You’re Jewish?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “Ezra Epstein was, once. Must have been. But I’m not him. Not anymore.”

Crowley stepped over a pile of books to look up at a large framed print on the wall. It showed a flaming circle lined with eyes.

“That’s an angel,” said Aziraphale. “One of the ophanim, to be specific. As described in Genesis.”

“Very... metal,” said Crowley.

“Do you believe in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory?” said Aziraphale, apropos of nothing.

“Maybe I would, if I knew what it was,” said Crowley. The phrase sounded familiar, something he must’ve heard about while doing physics research for some CrowleyCorp satellite-launch project decades ago, but anything he’d learned or knew back then that he managed to retain through the addled haze of those years had been forcibly locked away in a dark corner of his mind for too long to access easily.

“It goes a little bit like this,” Aziraphale said. “Somewhere out there, maybe I’m the rich one and you’re the poor one. Somewhere, there’s a world where we _both_ live like kings, but we never meet. Somewhere else, a world where we both died tragic, early deaths–”

Crowley laughed darkly. “What, and you’re in heaven, and I’m in hell?”

“You know,” said Aziraphale, “growing up, I was never taught about hell. It’s not exactly part of our… curriculum.”

“How’d they get you to do anything?” Crowley mused. “Without the looming threat.”

“That’s what they all ask.”

Crowley sat down on the bed, which looked wholly unslept-in. He wondered where Aziraphale spent his nights. He wondered how much pain Aziraphale covered up, underneath the disdainful exterior, underneath the smiles and the knowing nods and all those _names,_ like so many quilts, expertly sewn and beautiful but so thick, so suffocating.

“I’m not used to this,” said Aziraphale softly, getting up from his chair and sitting down next to Crowley on the bed. “Being… romanced. Pursued.”

“I hope it’s to your liking,” Crowley said.

“Oh, Crowley,” said Aziraphale. “I think it is.”

And now Crowley couldn’t look at Aziraphale, couldn’t bear the heat of his gaze even through his sunglasses, because it was too _much,_ he didn’t deserve to be looked at like that by _anyone—_

“When you found out,” said Crowley, his voice drawing raspy and tight the way it did when he was about to cry, “about me, you still looked at me like I could be forgiven. Like I was _human._ Even when you were angry, I— I could see it. I told myself I couldn’t, but I could.”

“And why wouldn’t I? You are, aren’t you?”

“But— everything I was... Nobody _else_ forgave me, even after I quit. The whole world thinks they know who I am, just because of what I did.”

 _“_ Tell me, what have you ever done to prove them wrong? Hide away from it all? Not exactly a helpful strategy, if you’re looking to clear your name—”

“It wasn’t by choice. I was trapped. You can’t know what it was like...”

“I can, and I do,” said Aziraphale. And he said it with such understanding, such bone-deep love and acceptance, that Crowley didn’t need to know the sordid details of what had driven this beautiful man to a life on the streets, a life of crime, a life ostensibly distant from all earthly comforts and yet performed with expert, orchestral fervor in pursuit of the best things that human hands could create.

He only needed to know that Aziraphale had something missing inside of him just like Crowley did, that he’d spent a lifetime losing it and finding it and losing it again, just like Crowley had, and that now, everything was very close to changing forever.

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale slowly.

“Yeah?”

“I just have to ask. With all that money— why do you live in such a godforsaken flat?”

“I was— I’m making a statement,” Crowley said, straightening up. It was weird, explaining this out loud. He’d existed with his own reasons for the way he lived buried inside him for so long. Bringing them to the surface felt almost sacrilegious. “Being a godless anchorite. Atoning. Repenting. Alone. I didn’t— I don’t deserve anything. Not after what I did. Eleven years...”

 _“_ Crowley, that’s no statement, that is the _absence_ of one. You can’t live your entire life in negation, dear. That is no way to experience the world. We are only on this planet for a blessed century, if we are lucky.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” said Crowley. “I never have. Not until I met you.”

Aziraphale’s eyes were inscrutable pools. Deep and ancient.

Crowley cleared his throat. “What were you getting at? A second ago, the many-worlds thing. I think you had a point. You must’ve.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, looking altogether flattered that Crowley had chosen to pick back up that particularly obscure thread of conversation.

“Well. It’s just— hm. Crowley, when we met... I was going to leave. Later that day,” Aziraphale said. “I was going to disappear, like I usually do. The protests— it was quite a convenient cover-up.”

“You were—?”

“ _But._ But. We both made choices on that day that led us back to each other. To me, that was meaningful… it confirmed some things, some things I wasn’t letting myself quite believe... Those choices opened up a new world to us. A world where things could be different for me, where I could have...”

He trailed off.

“Crowley, why are you here?” he asked.

“I— I have to tell you something. I _want_ to tell you something,” said Crowley.

“Please don’t say you bought me a house,” Aziraphale said darkly.

“No— no!” Crowley said. “Nothing like that. In fact… the opposite, really.”

“Hm?”

And Crowley explained to Aziraphale the whole sorry state of things: the contracts he’d thought were expiring, his father’s will which had promised precisely the opposite, and the twenty-four hour deadline which had ticked away last night, leaving him bereft of everything he’d ever known.

“I’ve got nothing, Aziraphale. Not anymore. I’m nobody,” Crowley said, once it was all laid out. “They’ll take the car back, and the flat. I don’t have anything. There’s nothing connecting me to who I was, to what I did. I’ve got less than you. I can’t offer you a better life anymore— I can’t promise you anything— no bookshop, no fancy dinners— but. _But._ That's the trick to it, isn't it. You didn't want any of that. You don't need it. And now, without it, I...”

Crowley took a deep breath.

“I want to be with you. I do. I don’t know how we’ll do it. Where we’ll go. But I want it. I want you. If you’ll have me.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale.

“Oh?”

“Well. I think… I think we could give it a try. I’d like that. Very much so.”

He reached for Crowley’s hand.

Crowley felt his phone ring in his pants pocket, but he was a bit occupied, leaning in towards Aziraphale…

It went to voicemail.

 _“Mr. Crowley! It’s Anathema— Crowley, whatever you’re doing,_ stop it now _. My instruments are going crazy, they’re all pointing to you— you and that man— I don’t— I don’t know how, but you’re going to destroy us all— this_ world _is in danger, if you don’t—”_

Their lips met. And the room erupted into wind and noise.

The room shuddered and jerked around them. Paintings were falling, stacks of books were sprawling themselves across the floor. There was a scream from downstairs, a crashing of china.

Crowley’s sunglasses dangled by an ear. Aziraphale toppled over onto Crowley on the bed, unbalanced, by the knock and rush of the sudden roiling movement.

“What’s happening?” Aziraphale cried out, over the roar of the wind. Crowley held him as closely as he could, trying to protect him from the hail of objects whipping around them.

“I think the world is ending,” said Crowley, and as he spoke he knew he was right. The man in the park had been right; Tracy’s cards had been right. The very air around them was unraveling, great strips of the room’s walls tearing themselves away to reveal only blackness behind. Paintings, knocked off the walls, disintegrating into nothingness. Books drifted into the air and disappeared, their pages fluttering into decay and then absence.

Aziraphale moaned in panic, as the blackness began to envelop the both of them, becoming absolute.

“Please— no— I need you—” Crowley grasped desperately at Aziraphale, but the bedroom was gone, there was only void, they were being pulled away from each other in the vacuum, the light was leaving and the world was cracking at the seams, undoing itself completely.

Aziraphale tumbled backwards, reaching out but finding nothing but dark and empty air. “I’m sorry! Crowley, I— I love you— Find me—”

**ELSEWHERE**

 

Crowley’s eyes flew open. He was on the ground. He was screaming, “ _Aziraphale!”_

And across from him, a face parallel, waking up— he recognized it— and that face, shouting too, a strangled “ _Crowley—!”_

In an instant, he was over at his side, they were both on their knees, clutching at each other, pulling each other close, resuming the desperate, passionate kiss that had been broken only by what could only have been the dissolution of the entire universe... And after a moment, Aziraphale’s head fell down against his shoulder, and he felt the other man’s face warm against his chest, and he brought his hands to the back of Aziraphale’s head and buried them deep in his hair.

And slowly, as he held Aziraphale in his arms, remembering the bedroom getting torn apart, thinking for that terrible instant that he’d lost him forever, just as they’d finally, _finally_ come together, finally offered themselves up to each other… other memories began to flood in.

The bookshop. The bestiary. The girl-thing. And the man he held, no man at all, but an _angel…_

For one, single painful moment, Heaven and Hell and the Apocalypse Averted battled it out inside his head with images of Old Man Crowley, Aziraphale’s mugshot, and that wretched flat—

And then it was quiet in his mind. The memories of the other place slotted themselves neatly away, integrating themselves as if they were two weeks of his life like any other.

Crowley blinked. He breathed. He stood up, helping Aziraphale to his feet. They looked at each other, and then down at their clasped hands. Now would normally be the point where they let go. But they didn’t.

And then they looked around them, and saw Madame Tracy and Anathema bringing themselves to their feet as well, looking a little shaky but none the worse for wear.

“You were there,” murmured Crowley. “And you were there too…”

“Madame Tracy!” exclaimed Aziraphale, finding his voice. “You— you were my _sister—!”_

“It was an honor, Mr. Aziraphale,” said Madame Tracy, a little bit proudly.

Anathema gasped, then, and pointed up at the ceiling. “Look—!”

Above them all, flat against the ceiling of the bookshop, was the girl-thing. Her body was glowing, pulses of energy flickering down her outline, and her eyes were wide and crazed as she looked down at the scene below.

“Ohhhh…. Oh, it’s so _beautiful!_ Everything I ever wanted…. Everything I could’ve dreamed of… Oh, I’ll never have to feed again! I’ll be the most powerful Adorantigus _ever! ..._ Oh, oh, no, it’s— it’s too much— OH—!”

And then she exploded. Pink glitter rained down from the ceiling.

Aziraphale held up a hand, collecting some of the ethereal particles in a little magenta pile in his palm. “It’s quite beautiful,” he said.

“Aziraphale,” said Crowley carefully. “I think we just killed her.”

“Ah.”

Across the room, Anathema picked up the bestiary from where it had been flung by the girl-thing’s tail, and flipped it open. “ _Adorantigus. This mythological creature,”_ she read out loud, _“is summoned by the scent of unconsummated true love. It traps two souls in a dream world of its own devising, in order to bring those souls closer to fulfillment. It then feeds upon the love-energy of their first kiss in the real world upon waking…_ ”

She looked up from the book, meaning to ask Aziraphale a complicated question regarding the exact sequence of events leading to the creature’s manifestation, but found Aziraphale quite occupied with attaching himself to Crowley by the mouth.  

“I think we’d better leave them to it, love,” said Madame Tracy, gently guiding Anathema out of the back room. “It’s been a long time coming.”

And as she closed the door behind them, under the falling mist of sparkling rose, which really was the dissociated particulate remnants of a voracious creature who’d gotten a bit more than she bargained for...

Aziraphale and Crowley shared in each other, kissing slow and deep, at last, alone, in love, as they’d always been.

 

 

 

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> [mandatory I'M AN AMERICAN disclaimer] sorry for any inaccuracies regarding UK law and geography etc etc. i did my best!!! thank you to my best friend's british boyfriend for helping me with some details lmfao
> 
> [also here are your two faceclaim choices for Old Man Crowley. you're welcome.](https://imgur.com/a/pTNOjPB)
> 
> & if you enjoyed this at all, i HIGHLY recommend watching netflix's The OA (quoted in the epigraph) which greatly inspired the general atmosphere/concept/lot of human!Aziraphale's philosophy and is one of my favorite shows of all time.
> 
> PS i'm on tumblr [@areyougonnabe](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com)


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